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BRIGADIER-GENERAL 

Fhomas Francis Meagher: 

HIS POLITICAL AND MILITARY CAREER ; 

WITH SELECTIONS FROM 

HIS SPEECHES AND WRITINGS. 




No, I do not despair of my old country, her peace, her glory, 
ier liberty ! To lift this island up,— to make her a benefactor to 
humanity, instead of being the meanest beggar in the world, to 
restore her to her native power and her ancient constitution— this 
: has been my ambition, and my ambition has been my crime. 
Judged by the law of England, I know this crime entails the 
penalty of death; but the history of Ireland explains this 
and justifies it." — Speech in the Bock at Clonmel, 1848. 



is crime, 



BRIGADIER-GENERAL 

THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER : 



HIS POLITICAL AND MILITARY CAREER; 

WITH SELECTIONS FROM 

HIS SPEECHES AND WRITINGS. 




GLASGOW: CAMERON & FERGUSON, 

88 WEST NILE STREET. 
LONDON; 12 AVE MARIA LANE. 



.1 



GLASGOW : 

du::n and w right, 

PKTNTERSi 



DEDICATION. 



Meagher was a soldier before lie girded on the sword. He was a soldier 
in the cause ©f liberty from the time when be stood upon the battlements 
of Antwerp, as he described in that famous speech, delivered in Dublin, 
July 28, 1846, when he declined to stigmatize the sword, because " at 
its blow a giant nation started from the waters of the Atlantic, and by 
its redeeming magic, and in the quivering of its crimson light, the crippled 
Colony sprang into the attitude of a proud Republic— prosperous, limit- 
less, and invincible The fortunes and the honour of the brave men 
of his race who took up arms all the world over, " in any good cause at 
all," were always dear and near to his heart. 

In sympathy with this feeling, therefore, I dedicate this volume to 

W. F. LYONS. 



New York, December, 1869. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

Introduction, , lm ... 7 

CHAPTER I. 

His early Career— Tlie Revolutionary Movement of 1 48, ... ... 9 

CHAPTER XL 

Meagher's Social and Personal Character— His Wit and Courage, 26 
CHAPTER HI. 

Convict Life in Tan Dieman's Land— Escape, and Arrival in America, 37 
CHAPTER IV. 

Meagher as a Soldier— He raises and takes command of the Irish 
Brigade, ... 41 

CHAPTER V. 

The Boston Speech at Music Hall, 50 

CHAPTER VI. 

The General at the head of his Brigade — Appointment by President 

Lincoln, and Confirmation by the Senate — The First Battle, ... 68 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Brigade goes into Action vrith eclat — Perils of the Rear-guard — 
Meagher in the thick of the Eight, 84 



vi. 



coy TEXTS. 



CHAPTER Yin. 

PAGE 

The Battle of Chancellors ville — Decimation of the Brigade — 
Meagher's Farewell, 91 

CHAPTER IX. 

The Etowah Command— Defence of Chattanooga— -Recognition of 
Meagher's Services, ... 93 

CHAPTER X. 

His Career in Montana Territory — Meagher appointed Secretary and 
Acting Governor — He fights the Politicians— Raising the Militia — 
Journey to Port Benton — His Death, 101 

APPEXDIX. 

Speech on the Transportation of Mitchel, ... 112 

Speech on American Benevolence — Irish Gratitude, ... ... ... 118 

Speech at the Mitchel Banquet in the Broadway Theatre, New York, 

January, 1854, ... 120 

Lectures in California, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 12G 

John Philpot Curran, ... ... ... ... ... 139 

Catholicism and Republicanism, 142 

Extracts from Holidays in Costa Rica, ... ... ... ... ... 148 

Meagher's Last Hours, ... ... 183 



INTRODUCTION. 



Why the life of Thomas Francis Meagher should be written 
requires no explanation. The career of a man who has made 
so interesting a part of the history of twenty remarkable 
years, who participated prominently in two revolutionary 
struggles — a bloodless one in the Old World, and a sanguin- 
ary one in the New — whose eloquence has thrilled two peo- 
ples by a fervour not common to the orators of our time, 
but almost peculiar to himself, and by a redundancy of 
classic beauty, both in thought and language, which distin- 
guished his oratorical efforts from those of any contemporary; 
the career of such a man should not be left to the mere 
memory of his words and works. 

Thousands who watched his course, from his first entry 
into public life in the very flush and exuberance of early 
manhood, down to the hour of his death ; — who saw with 
what self-sacrifice he flung behind him the pleasures and 
honours of a wealthy home, to share in the labours and dan- 
gers of the patriots then battling for the cause of his country; 
and who remember how manfully he faced all the buffets of 
ill-fortune which followed — the disasters of defeat, the 
solemnity of condemnation to the scaffold, and the penalty 
of eternal exile : all these thousands living in two hemis- 
pheres who loved him for the grand chivalry which clothed 



via. IN TROD UCTION. 

him like the armour of a knight, and the tenderness which 
permeated every fibre of his genial nature, will, perchance, 
appreciate this volume, however imperfectly its pages may 
present the story of a remarkable, and not fruitless life. 

How it comes to pass that the author has undertaken the 
task can be briefly stated. It is, with him, a work of love 
and duty. A tribute to a friendship cemented in years gone 
by, and enduring all days, even to the sorrowful end. 



BRIGADIER-GENERAL 

THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



CHAPTER I. 

HIS EARLY CAREER— THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT 

OF '48. 

"It is held 
That valour is the chief est virtue, and 
Most dignifies the haver. If it be, 
The man I speak of cannot in the world 
Be singly counterpoised." 

Shakespeare's Coeiolanusl 

In writing of the life, character, and genius of Thomas 
Francis Meagher, we have to treat of one whose name is 
familiar in two hemispheres. It has made part of the 
history of Ireland and of America for the last twenty years. 
In Ireland it has been associated with events which charac- 
terized an epoch not rare in the story of that country, — an 
epoch of revolution. What Lord Edward Fitzgerald was to 
the period of '98, and Robert Emmet was to the unfruitful 
though gallant movement of 1803, Meagher was, in a great 
measure, to the revolutionary attempt of 1848. 

Endowed with the same gifts of youth, fortune, and a 
highly cultivated mind, he was not deficient in the gallantry 
to lead, and the fortitude to suffer, which were conspicuous 
qualities in the character of Fitzgerald and Emmet. In 
America he has not only been recognized as a prominent 
representative of the genius, oratorical talent, and chivalry 
of his race, but he has contributed much, by the brilliancy 
and efficiency of his services as a soldier, to maintain the 
permanency of the Government. 



10 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



Bom in the city of Waterford, Ireland, on the 3d of 
August, 1823, he was placed, at the age of 11 years, under 
the care of the Jesuits, in their famous college at Clongowes 
"Wood, in the county of Kildare. Here his .young mind 
received the first impressions of classic lore, and of the skill 
and power of oratory which afterwards made him so distin- 
guished, and of which, even in those early days, he gave 
extraordinaiy evidence in his own school orations. He left 
Clongowes College to complete his education at that of 
Stoneyhurst in Lancashire, England, from which, after an 
* assiduous course of study, he entered upon the world in 
1843, with a reputation for ripe scholarship and rare talents 
which his future career in public life has permanently 
established. The transition from the serenity of collegiate 
life to the busy scenes of political strife upon which the 
young student entered, upon his return to Ireland in 1843, 
was as sudden as that which the mariner, basking in the 
luxurious calm of the Indian Ocean, experiences when the 
fearful simoom sweeps down from the coast, converting the 
placid sea into a boiling caldron. The Repeal movement was 
then agitating the country. Every town and village was in 
a ferment. O'Connell, playing with the passions of the 
people, which he controlled with a potency equal to the 
wand of Prospero, had constructed a gigantic organization 
upon the hopes he inspired, which promised to the aspira- 
tions of the most enthusiastic a national life, but which, 
after the incarceration of O'Connell in 1844, was only 
redeemed from the obloquy of an ignominious collapse when 
the youthful vigour of the country, which had been tmcor- 
rupted by the hackneyed ways of the politicians, stepped in, 
and declared that revolution, and not agitation, nationality 
and not " amelioration," was what the country needed. In 
the band of these true and earnest men who made this their 
Evangel, of whom John Mitchel, Thomas Davis, W. Smith 
O'Brien, Devin Eeilly, Doheny, John Martin, McManus* 
"O'Cornian, Dillon, were the leading spirits, Meagher stood 
in its front rank. What need to repeat the story of '48 ? I 
do not propose to do so here. The effort and the failure are 
but too sadly familiar. It had its heroes and its martyrs : 
the former could be numbered by thousands ; the latter, who 
fell directly under the bann of British " law ; ' and obtained 
a place in history, may be but few ; but the exiles who 



IRELAND IN '4$. 



11 



staked and lost all, — whose chairs are vacant by the fireside 
at home, — whose family ties are dissevered, — and the sim of 
whose fortunes is overclouded, count by hundreds. Though 
their names may not be found in the honoured roll of patriot 
martyrs, their sacrifices are none the less. 

It was at this period that J ohn Mitchel first made the 
acquaintance of the u Young Tribune," as people afterwards 
learned to call him. They met in Dublin, after Meagher's 
return from his English college, at the time when the mar- 
vellous effect of Thomas Davis' genius was awakening the 
land to a consciousness of the innate power of the people, 
and recalling to mind the traditions, the valorous deeds, and 
the civilization of ancient Ireland, in trenchant prose and 
musical verse. When and where Meagher and Mitchel met, 
John Mitchel tells in the columns of his Irish Citizen, thus : — 

"It is difficult now, for those who did not know Davis, 
to understand and appreciate the influence which that most 
puissant and imperial character exerted upon the young 
Irishmen of his day. Meagher had never known him per- 
sonally, but had been inspired, possessed by him. Ia 
speaking of Davis, his Lancashire accent seemed to subside ; 
and I could perceive, under the factitious intonations of 
Cockaigne, the genuine roll of the melodious Munster tongue. 
We became friends that evening. 

" Next day he came to me at the Nation office, in D'Olier 
Street : we walked out together, towards my house in Upper 
Leeson Street; through College Green, Grafton Street, 
Harcourt Street; and out almost into the country, near 
Bonnybrook. What talk! What eloquence of talk was 
his ! how fresh, and clear, and strong ! What wealth of 
imagination, and princely generosity of feeling ! To me it 
was the revelation of a new 7 and great nature, and I revelled 
in it, plunged into it, as into a crystal lake. He talked no 
" politics," no patriotism ; indeed he seldom interlarded his 
discourse with those topics ; but had much to say concerning 
women and all that eternal trouble, also about Stoneyhurst 
and his college days. We arrived at my home, and he 
stayed to dinner. Before he left he was a favourite with all 
our household, and so remained until the last. 

" Soon after, bound by his allegiance to the memory of 
Davis, he fairly committed himself to the party nicknamed 
'Young Ireland;' and that cost him, what we all know. 



12 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



But, young Ireland, or old Ireland, he was always Irish, to 
the very marrow." 

Meagher's services in the national cause of Ireland were 
compressed into the period of a few years. It was the 
stormiest time in the history of the country during all its 
struggles against foreign domination, since the days of the 
volpnteers in 1782, when Grattan and Charlemont were the 
master spirits, and the revolution of 1798, of which Wolfe 
Tone, and Fitzgerald, and Emmet, Bond, Hamilton Rowan, 
and the other leaders of the " United Irishmen 99 were the 
inspiration. 

From 1845 to 1848 Meagher laboured zealously in con- 
junction with the other leaders of the party upon which was 
at first somewhat sneeringly bestowed, but of which it may 
feel justly proud, the title of the " Young Ireland Party," — 
proud of its title because its young heart presented itself as 
a barrier against the tide of political conuption, place- 
hunting, and snivelling " patriotism and because it advo- 
cated the only thing known in Irish politics that rose above 
the genius of political tricksters — a national sovereignty. 
Meagher's participation in this struggle is already well 
known. The enthusiasm which his fervent eloquence and 
personal daring created in the people, contributed perhaps 
more than any other agency to impart vitality to a cause 
which was only unsuccessful because it lacked the physical 
strength to compete with a power untrammelled by foreign 
wars or diplomatic combinations, which might have reduced 
its capacity to resist revolution within its own borders. In 
the Summer of 1848 Meagher was captured, with arms in 
his hands, in the county of Tipperary, while engaged in an 
effort to array the peasantry against the authority of the 
British crown, after O'Brien's attempt at Ballingarry. He 
was tried for high treason, in conjunction with Smith O'Brien, 
Terence Bellew McManus, and Patrick O'Donoghue, at a 
special commission in Clonmel. He was convicted, of course, 
and sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, and his 
remains to be placed at the disposal of her majesty the 
Queen, to be dealt with according to her royal pleasure. 
His speech on the passing of this barbarous sentence will 
long be remembered for its unflinching spirit, its calmness, 
dignity, and splendid justification of the ac,ts for which he 
was condemned to suffer. It was as follows : — . 



IRELAND IN '48. 



13 



Speech in the Dock at Olonmel. 

" My Lords, it is my intention to say only a few words. 
I desire that the last act of a proceeding which has occupied 
so much of the public time, shall be of short duration. Nor 
have I the indelicate wish to close the dreary ceremony of a 
State prosecution with a vain display of words. Did I fear 
that hereafter when I shall be no more, the country which I 
have tried to serve, would think ill of me, I might indeed 
avail myself of this solemn moment to vindicate my senti- 
ments and my conduct. But I have no such fear. The 
country will judge of those sentiments and that conduct in 
a light far different from that in which the jury by which I 
have been convicted have viewed them ; and, by the country , 
the sentence which you, my Lords, are about to pronounce, 
will be remembered only as the severe and solemn attesta- 
tion of my rectitude and truth. 

" Whatever be the language in which that sentence 
be spoken, I know my fate will meet with sympathy, 
and that my memory will be honoured. In speaking thus, 
accuse me not, my Lords, of an indecorous presumption. To 
the efforts I have made, in a just and noble cause, I ascribe 
no vain importance, nor do I claim for those efforts any high 
reward. But it so happens, and it will ever happen so, that 
they who have tried to serve their country, no matter how 
weak the efforts may have been, are sure to receive the 
thanks and blessings of its people. 

" With my country then I leave my memory — my senti- 
ments — my acts — proudly feeling that they require no vindi- 
cation from me this day. A jury of my countrymen, it 
is true, have found me guilt} r of the crime of which I stood 
indicted. For this I entertain not the slightest feeling of 
resentment towards them. Influenced, as they must have 
been, by the charge of the Lord Chief Justice, they could 
have found no other verdict. What of that charge ? Any 
strong observations on it, I feel sincerely, would ill befit the 
solemnity of the scene; but, earnestly beseech of you, my 
Lord, you w T ho preside on that bench, when the passions and 
the prejudices of this hour have all passed away, to appeal 
to your conscience and ask of it, was your charge, as it 
ought to have been, impartial, and indifferent between the 
subject and the Crown ? 



14 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



" My Lords, you may deem this language unbecoming 
in me, and perhaps it might seal my fate. But I am here to 
speak the truth, whatever it may cost. I am here to regret 
nothing I have done, — to retract nothing I have ever said. 
I am here to crave with no lying lip, the life I consecrate to 
the liberty of my country. Far from it ; even here — here, 
where the thief, the libertine, the murderer, have left their 
foot-prints in the dust ; here on this spot, where the shadows 
of death surround me, and from which I see my early grave, 
in an unanointed soil open to receive me — even here, encir- 
cled by these terrors, the hope which has beckoned me to 
the perilous sea upon which I have been wrecked still con- 
soles, animates, and enraptures me. No, I do not despair of 
my old country, her peace, her glory, her liberty ! For that 
country I can do no more than bid her hope. To lift this 
island up, — to make her a benefactor to humanity, instead 
of being the meanest beggar in the world, — to restore her 
to her native power and her ancient constitution — this has 
been my ambition, and my ambition has been my crime. 
Judged by the law of England, I know this crime entails the 
penalty of death ; but the history of Ireland explains this 
crime, and justifies it. Judged by that history I am no 
criminal, — you (addressing Mr McManus) are no criminal, — 
you (addressing Mr O'Donoghue) are no criminal : I deserve 
no punishment, — we deserve no punishment. Judged by 
that history, the treason of which I stand convicted loses 
all its guilt ; is sanctified as a duty, will be ennobled as a 
sacrifice ! 

" With these sentiments, my Lords, I await the sentence 
of the Court. Having done what I felt to be my duty — 
having spoken what I felt to be truth, as I have done 
on every other occasion of my short career, I now bid fare- 
well to the country of my birth, my passion, and my death, — 
the country whose misfortunes have invoked my sympathies 
— whose factions I have sought to still — whose intellect I 
have prompted to a lofty aim — whose freedom has been my 
fatal dream. I offer to that country, as a proof of the love 
I bear her, the sincerity with which I thought, and spoke, 
and struggled for freedom, — the life of a young heart, and 
with that life all the hopes, the honour, the endearments of 
a happy and an honourable home. Pronounce then, my 
Lords, the sentence which the law directs — I am prepared 



HIS ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK, 



15 



to hear it. I trust I snail be prepared to meet its execution. 
I hope to be able, with a pure heart, and perfect composure, 
to appear before a higher tribunal — a tribunal where a Judge 
of infinite goodness, as well as of justice, will preside, and 
where, my Lords, many — many of the judgments of this 
world will be reversed.'' 

By special act of royal clemency, however, the prisoners 
were released from the extreme penalty, their punishment 
being commuted to transportation for life to the con- 
vict settlement at Van Dieman's Land. In the spring 
of 1852, after nearly four years of penal exile, he made 
his escape, and landed in New York, in the latter part of 
May. He was welcomed with the utmost enthusiasm by all 
classes. The corporation presented him with a congratu- 
latory address, through a joint committee of both boards, at 
the Astor House, on the 10th of June, and tendered him, 
on behalf of the metropolis, a public reception. Meagher, 
on that occasion, made a most dignified and modest reply, 
declining to accept any public entertainment in his honour, 
but gratefully acknowledging the sympathies expressed for 
him and the cause he had espoused and for which he 
suffered. He said : " Whilst my country remains in sorrow 
and subjection, it would be indelicate of me to participate 
in the festivities you propose. When she lifts her head and 
nerves her arm for a bolder struggle — when she goes forth 
like Miriam, with song and trimbel, to celebrate her victory 
— I too shall lift up my head, and join in the hymn of free- 
dom. Till then, the retirement I seek will best accord with 
the love I bear her, and the sadness which her present fate 
inspires. Is or do I forget the companions of my exile. The 
freedom that has been restored to me is embittered by the 
recollection of their captivity. My heart is with them at 
this hour, and shares the solitude in which they dwell. 
Whilst they are in prison a shadow rests upon my spirit, 
and the thoughts that otherwise might be free throb heavily 
within me. It is painful for me to speak. I should feel 
happy in being permitted to be silent. For these reasons 
you will not feel displeased with me for declining the honours 
you solicit me to accept." 

Yv T hile the disappointment of the public was great, 
these noble words were received with profound admira- 
tion; nor was there any hesitancy in accepting them 



16 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER, 



as evidence of a true, a manly, and a magnanimous 
nature. 

Meagher soon became distinguished as a popular lecturer. 
His first subject was 4i Australia/' and was a brilliant effort 
of elocution. Other subjects followed, principally upon 
affairs relating to Ireland — her poets, orators, statesmen, 
and men of letters — until Meagher became a favourite lec- 
turer in every State and city in the Union, where his voice 
was soon familiar to the ear of his countrymen. As a pub- 
lic writer and speaker, also, his reputation became very 
great. In September, 1855, after studying with Judge 
Emmet, he was admitted to the Xew York bar, where ho 
made at least one famous effort in the United States Court-, 
in the case of Fabens and the other Nicaragua w filibusters." 
He soon conceived the idea of undertaking an expedition to 
Central America, for the purpose of exploring that wild and 
luxuriant country, much of the wealth of which was still 
undeveloped, and through whose entangled forests new 
pathways had to be cut to facilitate the transit to the Paci- 
fic. Accordingly, accompanied by Senor Ramon Paez, son 
of the late venerable President of Venezuela, Meagher 
started for Costa Rica, and made a most valuable tour 
through that country, encountering vast difficulties in tra- 
versing the hitherto untrodden wilds, amidst which he dis- 
covered a new line of transit, which may be one day made 
available. On his return to this country, the information he 
had thus acquired was communicated to the public in a series 
of lectures admirably illustrated in panoramic form, and was 
subsequently published in a more permanent shape in 
Harper s Magazine, Some of the passages in these papers 
exhibit his brilliant descriptive powers. 

In 1853, Meagher published, from the press of Redfield, 
Xew York, a volume of his speeches on u The Legislative 
Independence of Ireland." This collection, together with 
its introduction, furnished to the American public the salient 
points in his antecedent history, as well as the motives 
which impelled him to his patriotic career in his native 
country. The speeches were the reflex of Meagher's mind 
in its youthful vigour, and we know of nothing which he 
has since spoken or written that excels them in that ornate 
language so peculiar to him, or that fervour which the 
inspiration of '-18 only could supply. In the poesy of words 



PUBLICATION OF HIS SPEECHES. 



17 



with which his eloquence clothed every idea — the fine pic- 
torial effect and rich colouring that adorned everything he 
said, Meagher probably had no model. If he followed the 
style of Curran or Grattan — and he inclined most to the lat- 
ter — he invested it with an originality of thought and ex- 
pression that made his glorious eloquence all his own. 

In the "Preface" to this volume of speeches Meagher 
not only gives the reason for publishing them, but the 
motives which brought them into life. He says : 

"The anxiety will not be censured which induces me to 
save from injury the proofs of an interest early taken in the 
condition of my native land. Nor will it be wholly ascribed 
to vanity, if the hope escapes me that even yet these words 
of mine may conduce to her advantage. To some extent 
the speeches may be considered out of date. The tone in- 
spired by a people in the attitude of resistance sounds 
strangely upon the ear when the chorus which hailed the 
coming of the contest has ceased and the fire upon the altar 
has been extinguished. 

u To revive in Ireland the spirit which, in the summer of 
1848, impetuously sought to clear a way, with an armed 
hand, to the destiny that lay beyond an intervening camp 
and throne, may be for the time forbidden. But in the 
pursuit of humbler blessings — in the endurance even of 
defeat, the vices which adversity engenders or exasperates 
may be resisted — hope, activity, and courage be awakened 
— all those virtues be restored and nourished, which, in a 
loftier mood, were loved so dearly for the strength and 
ornament they bestowed. The suppressions of sectarian 
feuds — the blending of the various races that have at 
different seasons been cast upon our soil, and have taken 
root therein — the love of truth, liberality, and labour — 
the necessity of disinterestedness, integrity, and fortitude 
amongst the people — the necessity of a high order of in- 
tellect, honour, and propriety amongst our public men — 
these were the lessons taught, — these the virtues encour- 
aged and enforced — when, breaking through a corrupt 
system of politics, the young Democracy of Ireland claimed 
for their country the rank and title which was hers by 
natural law, by covenant, and prescription." 

In the month of April, 1856, Meagher made his first 
and only essay as a journalist. On the 9th of that month 

B 



18 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



he published the first number of the Irish News, in New 
York. In this enterprise he was assisted by two worthy 
gentlemen, Messrs Richard J. Lalor and Gerald E. Lalor, 
who continued to publish the paper until its decline in July, 
1860. For some time after the paper was started, John 
Savage was amongst its most active contributors. Meagher 
himself wrote much for the journal in its early days, fur- 
nishing many humorous reminiscences of his Irish life, but 
not exhibiting in his other articles, to any remarkable degree, 
that vigour of thought and richness of language with which 
his lectures and speeches abounded. Journalism was, in 
fact, not Meagher's best field of action, and I think he 
had become convinced of that before he abandoned it for 
the stormy life of the soldier and the politician. 

There were many incidents in Meagher's life in Ireland 
which seemed to identify his future connection with the 
American Republic. One of them had a peculiar significance. 4 
During the height of the Irish famine of 1847, the ship 
u Victor," from New York, arrived in Dublin, loaded wit# 
corn for the starving Irish. The captain of the ship was 
entertained at a splendid banquet in the Pillar-room of the 
Rotuudo, Dublin, over which the venerable Richard O'Gor- 
man, now deceased, presided. Meagher, in proposing the 
health of the ladies of America, concluded his beautiful 
speech with these words — - ; Should the time come when 
Ireland will have to make the choice, depend upon it, Sir, 
she will prefer to be grateful to the Samaritan rather than 
be loyal to the Levite." These were prophetic words. The 
pledge they inspired, Meagher kept to the death. On one 
occasion during the war he happened to meet the captain of 
the "Victor." Meagher had then fought his brigade all 
through the Peninsular battles. Captain Clark was a 
lieutenant on one of the gunboats. Their meeting was of 
the heartiest kind. The captain recalled what Meagher had 
said in the Pillar-room, and, shaking him with both hands, 
exclaimed — " General, you have nobly kept the promise you 
then made." 

During his visit to Central America, Meagher made many 
friends among the most distinguished men of that country ; 
and some of the most enthusiastic congratulations upon his 
gallant conduct in the war were afterwards bestowed by 
these gentlemen. 



HIS BEARING AS A SOLDIER. 



19 



When the war in the South broke out, Meagher entered, 
as we have seen, promptly into the army of defence ; but 
he did not take this course with undue precipitancy, as from 
his ardent nature might be supposed. On the contrary, it 
was not until his conscientious judgment determined him 
that it was his duty, that he took up arms on the side of 
the Government. But, his resolution once formed, he never 
for an instant wavered or grew cold. Both morally and 
physically his support of the Union was genuine and 
vigorous, such as any patriot or soldier might stake his 
reputation upon. When he returned after his resignation of 
the command of the brigade, and with it his commission, the 
enemies of the Administration counted surely on his siding 
with them, — partially at all events, for it was the general 
opinion that neither he nor his brigade had been justly 
treated. * They were grievously and bitterly disappointed. 
At the dinner given him in the Astor House by a number of 
distinguished citizens, June 25th, 18 Go, on which occasion 
0i magnificent gold medal was presented to him, he flung his 
private vexations, whatever they may have been, to the 
winds, and made one of his most impassioned and splendid 
appeals in favour of the Xational cause. It has been the 
positive characteristic of Meagher never to give up either a 
cause or friend until he found the one to be false and the 
other to be bad. So true did Meagher prove himself to the 
Xational cause, both in and cut of the field, from first to last, 
and all through the conflict, that President Johnson, in a 
communication addressed to the Adjutant-General, United 
States Army, setting forth Meagher's claims to promotion, 
urged them in the strongest language. 

Meagher's bearing as a soldier, from beginning to end, 
was the subject of universal admiration, which was equally 
shared by the men he commanded, the generals associated 
with him, and even by the enemy, from whom many ac- 
knowledgments of his courage and daring emanated on 
several occasions. His devotion to his men was unceasing. 
While observing all the rules of military discipline rigidly, 
as an efficient commander should do, he was always frank, 
joyous, and considerate with them ; careful of their wants 
when sick or wounded ; cheering them by pleasant words 
and smMes on the dreary march, and inspiring them in 
the hour of battle by his example. It has been alleged 



20 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 



against the character of Meagher as a careful general, 
that he often exposed his brigade to unnecessary danger ; 
but it was never yet asserted that during the whole period 
of his command he ever took his men into a dangerous 
place without being the first to go himself. As Col. McGee 
said in his speech on the occasion of the presentation of 
colours to the Sixty-Ninth Eegiment at Carrigmore, the 
residence of the late Daniel Devlin, Manhattan ville, in De- 
cember, 1863 : — "The words of our general when danger 
had to be faced were not, 4 Go, boys, go,' but 6 Come, boys, 
follow me.' " Yet, as we have stated, slanderous insinua- 
tions were bruited abroad, such as those of Mr Russell, of 
the London Times, and as substantially squelched, by the 
denial of those who had the best opportunity of knowing 
their utter falsity. However it may have been sought by 
jealousy or malice to fasten upon Meagher charges of reck- 
lessness in time of danger and indifference to the safety and 
comfort of the men under his command, every such charge 
has been amply disproved and repudiated by those bes* 
qualified to bear testimony. When the general was ap- 
pointed to a command in the West under General Steadman, 
the revered Principal of the St Xavier's Jesuit College, 
Sixteenth Street, New York, in his letter of introduction to 
the Father Provincial at St Louis, said of Meagher that 
" in all the battles to which Gen. Meagher led his soldiers, 
he acted as a true Christian gentleman, with a truly Irish 
faith." On the eve of Gen. Meagher's departure for Mon- 
tana to assume his position as Secretary of that Territory 
by appointment of President Johnson, in the month of July, 
1865, the author had the satisfaction of hearing another 
estimable clergyman sa}~, in taking leave of the general — 
4 * You may take this assurance with you, which I give from 
my own knowledge, that every soldier of the Irish Brigade 
speaks of you with the utmost affection ; and that being so, 
you need not care who speaks otherwise." If further evi- 
dence were necessary to rebut the stories of the many 
gossips and unthinking people who weakly assailed a gallant 
soldier's reputation, it can be found in the address presented 
to Gen. Meagher at the head-quarters of the Brigade by all 
its officers, upon the occasion of his taking leave of them. 
It was written by Col. James E. McGee, then commanding 
the Sixty-Ninth, and is as follows :— 



THE IRISH BRIGADE. 



21 



To Brigadier-General Thomas F. Meagher, 

Late commanding Irish Brigade. 

The undersigned officers of the original regiments of the 
Irish Brigade, in the field, having learned with deep regret 
that you have been compelled, by reasons of paramount 
importance, to tender your resignation as General of the 
Brigade, and the Government having accepted your resigna- 
tion, you are about to separate yourself from us, desire in 
this manner, as the most emphatic and courteous, to express 
" to you the sorrow we personally feel at your departure, and 
the sincere and heartfelt affection we entertain, and shall 
ever entertain, for you under all circumstances and changes 
of time and place. 

We regard you, General, as the originator of the Irish 
Brigade, in the service of the United States ; we know that 
to your influence and energy the success which it earned 
during its organization is mainly due ; we have seen you, 
since it first took the field — some eighteen months since — 
sharing its perils and hardships on the battle-field and in the 
bivouac ; always at your post, always inspiring your com- 
mand with that courage and devotedness which has made 
the Brigade historical, and by word and example cheering 
us on when fatigue and dangers beset our path ; and we 
would be ungrateful indeed did we forget that whatever 
glory we have obtained in many a hard-fought field, and 
whatever honour we may have been privileged to shed on 
the sacred land of our nativity, that to you, General, is due, 
to a great extent, our success and our triumphs. 

In resigning the command of the remnant of the Brigade, 
and going back to private life, in obedience to the truest 
dictates of honour and conscience, rest assured, General, that 
you take with you the confidence and affection of every man 
in our regiments, as well as the esteem and love of the 
officers of your late command. 

With this sincere assurance, we are, General, your 
countrymen and companions in arms. 



P. Kelly, 

Col. 88th N. T. Irish Brigade. 
B. C. Bextly, 

Lieut.-Col. Com'd'g 63d N. Y. 
James Saunders, 

Cap;. 69th N. Y. 



John Smith, 

Major SSth N. Y. 

James E. McGee, 

Capt. Commanding G9th N. Y. 

Wm. J. Nagle, 

Capt. Commanding SSth N. Y. 



22 



THOMAS FRAXC1S MEAGHER. 



ElCHAED MORONEY, 
Capt. 69th N. Y. 

John H. Gleeson, 

Ccapt. 63d N. Y., Company B. 
Maurice W. Wall. 

Capt. and A. A. A. G. Irish Brigade. 
Thomas Twohy, 

Capt, 63d X. Y., Company I. 
John I. Blake, 

Company B, SSth N. Y. 
Robert H. Millike::, 

Capt. 69th N. Y. 

Garrett Inagle, 

Capt. 69th 1ST. Y. 

John Dwyer, 
Capt, 63d N. Y. 

Michael Gallagher, 

Capt. 88th N. Y. 

Laurence Reynolds, 

Surgeon 63d N. Y. 

F. Reynolds, 

Surgeon SSth N. Y. 
Richard Powell, 

Asst. Surgeon SSth X. Y. 

James J. Purcell, 

Asst. Surgeon 63d N. Y. 
Chas. Smart, 

Asst. Surgeon 63d N. Y. 

Richard P. Moore, 

Capt. 63d N. Y., Company A. 
John C. Foley, 

Adjt. SSth N. Y. 
John W. Byron, 

1st Lieut. SSth N. Y., Company E. 
D. F. SULLIYAN, 

1st Lieut, and B.Q M. 69th N. Y. 
James I. McCormick, 

Lieut. Quartr. 63d N. Y. 

Miles McDonald, 

1st Lieut, and Adjt. 63d N. Y. 

P. J. Condon, 

Capt. 63d N. Y., Company Q. 

John PI. Donovan, 

Capt. 69th 1ST. Y. 
John J. Hurley, 

1st Lieut. 63d N. Y., Company I. 
Edvv. B. Carroll, 

2d Lieut. 63d N. Y., Company B. 
James Gallagher, 

2d Lieut. 63d N. Y., Company F. 
J ohn Ryan, 

1st Lieut. 63d N". Y., Company Gr. 



MATTHEW HART, 

2d Lieut. 63d N. Y., Company £. 
Bernard S. O'^eil, 

1st Lieut. 69th N. Y. 
Matthew Murphy, 

1st Lieut, (,9th IS 7 . Y. 

Luke Brennan, 

2d Lieut. 69th N. Y. 

Robert Lafin, 

2d Lieut. 69th >7. Y. 

W. L. D. O'Grady, 

2d Lieut. SSth N. Y. 

P. J. O'Connor, 

1st Lieut. 63d N". Y. 
Edward Lee, 

1st Lieut, 63d N. Y. 

Patrick Maher, 

1st Lieut. 63d N. Y. 
David Burk, 

Lieut. 69th N. Y. 

Martin Scully, 

1st Lieut. 69th N. Y. 

Richard A. Kelly, 

1st Lieut. 69th N. Y. 

Joseph M. Burns, 

Lieut. SSth N. Y. 
James E. Byrne, 

Lieut. 8Sth N. Y. 
John O'Neil, 

Lieut. SSth N. Y. 
Wm. McClelland, 

2d Lieut. SSth N. Y., Comp. G. 
J OHN M ADIGAN, 

Lieut. SSth N. Y. 
James I. Smith, 

1st Lieut, and Adjt. 69th X. Y. 
Edmund B. Xagle, 

Lieut, SSth N. Y., Company D. 
Patrick Ryder, 

Capt, SSth N. Y. 

Dominick Connolly, 

2d Lieut. 63d N. Y. 

John J. Sellors, 

2d Lieut. 63d In . Y. 

William Quirk, 

Capt. 63d N. Y. 
Patrick Chamber, 

1st Lieut. 63d N. Y. 

Patrick Callaghan, 

1st Lieut. 69th N. Y., Comp. G. 

P. M. Haverty, 

Quarter-Master SSth N. Y. 



At the banquet given to the returned veterans of tne 
Brigade in Irving Hall, January, 1864, Gen. Meagher boldly 
appealed to his comrades, demanding from them a denial of 
all these charges. He said (we quote from a daily paper) — 



MEDAL OF HONOUR. 



23 



a Comrades, officers, and privates of the Irish Brigade, now 
that you are assembled together publicly in this city, I call 
upon you to answer me plainly, unreservedly, and honestly, 
whether the charges which have been circulated concerning 
me are true or false. It has been said of me that I have on 
several occasions wantonly and recklessly exposed the lives 
of my men. Is this true or not ? [Cries of 6 No, no/ in all 
parts of the house.] Have I ever brought you into the face 
of danger except when ordered there ? [Renewed cries of 
'No.'] When I brought you where danger was to be 
encountered, was I not always the first in myself, and was 
I not always at your head? ['Yes, yes,' and the most 
uproarious applause.] Having brought you in, was I not 
the last out? [ 4 Yes, yes, yes,' and a cry of 4 First and last 
in the danger,' from one of the men.] I thank you for this 
contradiction of the malicious falsehoods which have been 
asserted against me, and I hope that this answer of the 
Irish Brigade will be sent not only over this land, but over 
to Europe, where the enemies of this country have many 
sympathisers and abettors/ 7 

That will suffice upon this subject. It is not an agree- 
able task to have even to appear to enter upon a defence of 
a brave soldier, whose laurels are the proudest as well as 
the strongest rebutting testimony to all charges or insinua- 
tions, but as matters of history, I have chosen to put these 
facts upon the record. 

Meagher was the recipient during the war of many well- 
deserved honours from the citizens of New York. We have 
already seen that he was entertained at the Astor House by 
a large number of his friends, and decorated with a magnifi- 
cent medal, a description of which will afford some idea of 
the taste of design and skill of execution displayed in 
its manufacture. It is wrought in the finest gold, 
and is about three inches in diameter, the centre being 
formed by a beautiful miniature of an ancient Irish Cross ; 
in fact it is a perfect fac- simile of the old Cross of Monaster- 
boice, the tracery on the original being faithfully represented 
on the gold. Eound the outside and bound with wreaths of 
Shamrocks to the points of the Cross, is a scroll or ribbon of 
gold, edged with enamel, and bearing the motto of the 
general's family — 6t i>i periculis audacia et firmitas in ccelo," 
(Boldness in dangers and trust in Heaven.) Behind this 



24 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



appear rays of glory emanating from the centre and typify- 
ing the " Sunburst." The medal is suspended from a 
military " ribbon " — red, white, and blue, edged with green 
— fastened by two pins : the upper one bearing the words, 
" Irish Brigade, U.S. ;" the lower one is formed of a bundle 
of ancient Irish skenes and sparths, bound together by a 
wreath of laurel, which forms the loop in which the ring of 
the medal is inserted. On the ribbon are twelve clasps, 
each bearing the name of one of the battles at which the 
Irish Brigade was present, in the following order : — " York- 
town, Fair Oaks, Gaines' Mill, Peach Orchard, Savage's 
Station, White Oak Swamp, Glendale, Malvern Hill, 
Antietam, Fredericksburg, Scott's Mills, Chancellorsville.' , 
On the reverse of the medal is the inscription — " General 
Meagher, from Citizens of Xew York, June, 1863." 

The officers of the Brigade also presented him with a 
splendid gold medal with the Irish harp resting on the 
American and Irish flags, surrounded with a wreath of 
Shamrocks — as a token of their high appreciation and esteem. 
The presentation was made at the residence of General 
Meagher, Fifth Avenue, by Col. Nugent, in the presence of 
a large body of the officers of the Brigade and a number of 
distinguished citizens. The hospitalities of the city were 
tendered to him by the Common Council, through a com- 
mittee headed by Mayor Opdyke, at the Astor House ; and 
on that occasion the " Kearney Cross," upon which was 
the inscription — " To Gen. Meagher, of the Irish Brigade, 
Kearney's friend and comrade of the Old Division." The 
Cross was presented by Alderman Farley on behalf of the 
Corporation. 

When the Irish Brigade was more than decimated, after 
the series of battles which preceded that of Chancellorsville, 
Meagher resigned his command ; tendering his services to 
the Government at the same time, in any other capacity. 
He was soon after appointed to the command of the military 
district of Etowah, where he distinguished himself by the 
skill with which he held Chattanooga secure from the 
attacks of the enemy, with a small force, at one of the most 
critical points of Gen. Sherman's grand movement towards 
the Atlantic, of which I shall speak hereafter. 

Thomas Meagher, the father of the subject of this 
memoir, was a wealthy retired merchant of Vraterford, 



MEAGHER' S SOX. 



25 



which city he represented for some time in the British Par- 
liament. Here, too, Meagher's son, the issue of his 
Australian matrimonial alliance, was born, under the roof of 
his grandfather. Describing a visit to the quiet old home in 
the Urbs Intacta, in company with Meagher, during the '48 
movement, John Mitchel refers to the boy, in these delicious 
terms : — 

" In those same sombre rooms," says Mitchel, " sur- 
rounded by the same solemn environment, there grows up 
at this moment another young shoot of that old Tipperary 
stock, a youth now of fifteen years, and with many subjects 
for thoughtful musing, if he has a head for thought, as is 
likely. Perhaps he occupies at this day his father's little 
study, surrounded by his father's books, and haunted by his 
father's fame. What reflections must have passed through 
that youthful head, as the news used to arrive from day to 
day of some desperate battle on the Rappahannock or Chick - 
ahominy — and of the Green Flag of the Irish Brigade front- 
ing the red Confederate battle-flag (no unworthy match). 
Did the boy see in thought his father's dark plume careering 
through the battle, amidst the smoke and thunder, and the 
tempest of crashing musketry and fierce shouts of the 
onset? Did the young heart swell with pride, and hope, 
and a longing and craving to be riding that moment by his 
father's side ? " 

The loss of Meagher's mother, almost in his infancy, was 
supplied by the maternal care of a most pious and exemplary 
aunt, whose heart was interwoven with the life of the boy. 
From her care he passed to the charge of the Jesuit institu- 
tions, where his education was completed. His reverence 
for these institutions, and the system practised there, never 
faded. Writing, years after he left them, he says : — 

" All over the world the colleges of the Jesuits are pre- 
cisely alike. I have spent six years in Clongowes, their Irish 
college. I have spent four years in Stoneyhurst, their 
English college. I have visited their college in Brussels, 
their college in Namour ; their college in Georgetown, in 
the District of Columbia ; visited their college in Springhill, 
a few miles from Mobile, in the state of Alabama ; visited 
their college in Xew Orleans, on the banks of the great 
Ptepublican river of the Mississippi ; and in each and all, 
whether as an inmate or a visitor, the prevailing identity in 







26 



THOMAS FRAXCIS MEAGHER 



each and all, no matter what the clime, what the govern- 
ment — the prevailing 1 identity has been to me not only very 
perceptible, but singularly striking. Not only singularly 
striking, but from the completeness of its identity, sugges- 
tive of a grand belief — the belief that there is, or can be, 
with all the strifes, vagaries, incongruities, or enmities of 
the world, a code of moral excellence, gentleness, and beauty 
which may reconcile and blend the diversities and antipathies 
which our common nature, diseased by the fatal Fall, has 
thrown out and multiplied malignantly," 



CHAPTER II. 

MEAGHER'S SOCIAL AXD PERSONAL CHARACTER — HIS 
WIT AXD COURAGE. 

MEAGHER'S nature overflowed with the spirit of wit and 
humour. His wit was exquisite at times, and his humour 
always irresistible, yet he loved more to listen to wit in 
others than to display it himself. The pleasant, hearty, and 
almost silent laughter with which he enjoyed a happy joke, 
a quick repartee, or a brilliant thought thrown off spontane- 
ously by his companions, will not be easily forgotten by 
those who shared with him the hours of sunshine which 
formed a part of his life in that interregnum in New York 
which existed between the stormy passages of his political 
career in Ireland, his penal exile in Australia, and his 
advent upon a new battle-field as a soldier. During that 
period it may be said that Meagher had no well-defined 
purpose in life, except the grand one which was born with 
him, to be something great and useful in the world. While 
he enjoyed a comparative leisure in New York at this time, 
he was never idle. His lectures, his public speeches, his 
short journalistic labours, his Costa Rica pilgrimage, divided 
his thoughts with great schemes for the future ; — schemes 
concerning which he was always hopeful, but few of which, 
unhappily, were destined to reach fruition. His law studies 
and his brief practice at the bar, were yokes which he bore, not 
without a little fretting to be sure, yet with infinite good- 
humour, He had the pluck to meet every difficulty in the 



HIS FEARLESSNESS. 



27 



path that lay towards the fulfilment of his aspirations. He 
was rarely down-cast ; for indeed such good fortune as falls 
to a man's lot from the love and approbation of his friends 
was always present with him. The crime de la creme of 
New York society entertained him and courted him. He 
lived in that atmosphere as well as in the affections of his 
own people. He may have been, in a measure, spoiled b} r 
it ; but I am not willing to give my testimony to that fact. 
Meagher was a gentleman — an Irish gentleman — and no 
flattery could add to the consciousness which he already 
possessed, that he represented, and was always ready to 
represent that class the world over. There was that innate 
material in him that could neither absolutely bend to flat- 
tery, nor submit to the approaches of vulgar familiarity. 
Everything small and mean in official or in private life he 
detested ; and while he accepted, he could smile at the 
ovations bestowed upon him. Hence he had some enemies. 
And why not ? What man wants to go to his grave with- 
out placing on record his enemies as well as his friends ? 
If one's friends can be noted down amongst the good, and 
honest, and virtuous, and manly in society, it makes little 
difference where his enemies are placed. And this was 
precisely the case with Meagher. Here, therefore, I leave 
this branch of the subject. 

There are many of his friends who remember with what 
indifference he regarded such hostility as came only from 
small and unworthy minces ; how little he was affected by 
criticisms that sprung from an ignoble source. Sensitive 
as he always was to everything touching in the most deli- 
cate fashion his honour and his name, he could treat with 
good-natured contempt, expressed in an easy, and sometimes 
in a jovial way, attacks that even some of his friends 
regarded as severe and unjust ; dismissing them with a 
laughing but point-blank hit at the petty slanderer. But 
with what trenchant force he could defend himself when 
assailed from quarters worthy of his ire ! How boldly he 
could meet an attack, whether it came from a mob or a 
newspaper ! Mark his bearing in the turbulent scene at 
Belfast, when, in company with Mitchel and Smith O'Brien, 
he confronted the burly butchers of Hercules Street. As 
joyous as he was fearless in his bravery, he saw all the fun 
of the thing, while he did not think much about the danger. 



28 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



In Limerick, too, at the famous banquet given to O'Brien, 
Mitchel, and himself, on the 29th of April, 1848, when a 
senseless mob, instigated by an influence — which was power- 
ful in proportion as it was regarded as sacred, and coming 
from a reverend source — made an assault upon the building, 
smashed the windows with stones, set fire to the structure, 
without one chivalrous thought for the safety of the hundreds 
of ladies who were within. Here, in the midst of the 
tumult. Meagher's calmness did not forsake him. "While 
O'Brien, with his usual impetuous courage, went out of 
doors into the midst of the surging and howling mass, by 
whom — it is shameful to record — he was grossly maltreated, 
hoping to cow them by his boldness, Mitchel and Meagher 
remained within, awaiting the opportunity to say what they 
had to say, and were not going to leave without saying it. 
O'Brien, Mitchel, and Meagher had just been arrested on a 
charge of sedition, and were then under bail to appear be- 
fore the Court of Queen's Bench at the approaching term. 
When the tumult was stilled, Meagher uttered this magnifi- 
cent vindication of sedition, than which few nobler words 
ever came from his impassioned lips : — 

u The occurrences of this evening do not dishearten me. 
I am encouraged by your sympathy, and can, therefore, 
forgive the rudeness of the rabble. 

" Nor do I conceive that our cause is injured by these 
manifestations of ignorance and immorality. The mists 
from the marshes obscure the sun — they do not taint, they 
do not extinguish it. 

" Enough of this. The wrongs and perils of the country 
must exclude from our minds every other subject of con- 
sideration. 

" From the summer of 1846 to the winter of 1848, the 
wing of an avenging angel swept our soil and sky. The 
fruits of the earth died as the shadow passed, and they who 
had nursed them into life, read in the withered leaves that 
they, too, should die ; and, dying, swell the red catalogue of 
carnage in which the sins and splendours of that empire — of 
which we are the prosecuted foes — have been immortalized. 
And, whilst death thus counted in his spoils by the score, 
we, who should have stood up between the destroyer and 
the doomed — we. who should have prayed together, marched 
together, fought together, to save the people — we were in 



SPEECH AT LIMERICK. 



29 



arms — drilled and disciplined into factions — striking each 
other across the graves that each day opened at our feet, 
instead of joining hands above them, and snatching victory 
from death. 

" The cry of famine was lost in the cry of faction, and 
many a brave heart, flying from the scene, bled as it looked 
back upon the riotous profanation in which the worst pas- 
sions of the country were engaged. 

" You know the rest — you know the occurrences of the 
last few weeks. At the very hour when the feud was hot- 
test, a voice from the banks of the Seine summoned us to 
desist. That voice has been obeyed — we have trampled 
upon the whims and prejudices that divided us — and it is 
this event that explains the sedition in which we glory. 
The sudden reconstruction of the regenerative power which, 
in 1843, menaced the integrity of the empire, and promised 
liberty to this island, dictated the language which has 
entitled us to the vengeance of the minister and the confi- 
dence of the people. 

" Nor this alone. It is not in the language of the lawyer 
or the police magistrate that the wrongs and aspirations of 
an oppressed nation should be stated. For the pang with 
which it writhes — for the passion with which it heaves — for 
the chafed heart — the burning brain — the quickening pulse 
— the soaring soul — there is a language quite at variance 
with the grammar and the syntax of a government. It is 
generous, bold, and passionate. It often glows with the fire 
of genius — it sometimes thunders with the spirit of the pro- 
phet. It is tainted with no falsehood — it is polished with no 
flattery. In the desert — on the mountain — within the city 
—everywhere — it has been spoken, throughout all ages. It 
requires no teaching — it is the inherent and imperishable 
language of humanity. Kings, soldiers, judges, hangmen, 
have proclaimed it. In pools of blood they have sought to 
cool and quench this fiery tongue. They have built the 
prison — they have launched the convict-ship — they have 
planted the gallows tree — to warn it to be still. The sword, 
the sceptre, the black mask, the guillotine — all have failed. 
Sedition wears the crown in Europe on this da} r , and the 
scaffold, on which the poor scribes of royalty had scrawled 
her death- sentence, is the throne upon which she receives 
the homage of humanity, and guarantees its glory. 



so 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



" Therefore it is, I do not blush, for the crime with which 
I have been charged. Therefore it is, you have invited a 
traitorous triumvirate to your ancient and gallant city, and 
have honoured them this evening. 

" In doing so, you have taken your stand against the 
government of England, and I know of no spot in Ireland 
where a braver stand should be made than here, by the 
waters of the Shannon, where the sword of Sarsfield flashed. 
Whilst that old Treaty stone, without the Thomond gate, 
attests the courage and the honour of your fathers, the nerve 
and faith of Limerick shall never be mistrusted. 

"No, there could be no coward born within those walls, 
which, in their old age, instruct so thrillingly the young- 
hearts that gaze upon them with reverence — whispering to 
them, as they do, memories that drive the blood, in boiling 
currents, through the veins — telling those young hearts not 
to doubt, not to falter, not to fear — that in a sunnier hour 
the Wild Geese shall yet return from France ! 

"These sentiments are, no doubt, seditious, and the 
expression of them may bring me within the provisions of 
this new felony bill — the bill, mind you, that is to strike the 
nation dumb. 

" Yes, from this day out, you must lie down, and eat 
your words ! Yes, you — you starved wretch, lying naked 
in that ditch, with clenched teeth and starting eye, gazing 
on the clouds that redden with the flames in which your 
hovel is consumed — .what matters it that the claw of hunger 
is fastening in your heart — what matters it that the hot 
poison of the fever is shooting through your brain — what 
matters it that the tooth of the lean dog is cutting through 
the bone of that dead child, of which you were once the 
guardian — what matters it that the lips of that spectre 
there, once the pride and beauty of the village, when 
you wooed and won her as your bride, are blackened 
with the blood of the youngest to whom she has given birth 
— what matters it that the golden grain, which sprung from 
the sweat you squandered on the soil, has been torn from 
your grasp, and Heaven's first decree to fallen man be 
contravened by human law — what matters it that you are 
thus pained and stung — thus lashed and maddened — hush ! 
— beat back the passion that rushes from your heart — check 
the curse that gurgles in your throat— die ! — die without a 



SPEECH AT LIMERICK. 



31 



groan ! — die without a struggle ! — die without a cry !— for 
the government which starves you, desires to live in peace ! 
u Shall this be so? 

u Shall the conquest of Ireland be this year completed ? 
Shall the spirit which has survived the pains and penalties 
of centuries — which has never ceased to stir the heart of 
Ireland with the hope of a better day — which has defied the 
sword of famine and the sword of law — which has lived 
through the desolation of the last year, and kept the old flag 
flying, spite of the storm which rent its folds — what ! shall 
this spirit sink down at last — tamed and crippled by the 
blow with which it has been struck — muttering no sentiment 
that is not loyal, legal, slavish, and corrupt ? 

" Why should I put this question ? 

" Have I not been already answered by that flash of 
arms, which purifies the air where the pestilence has been? 
Have I not already caught the quick beating of that heart, 
which many men had said was cold and dull, and, in its 
strong pulsation, have we not heard the rushing of that 
current, which, for a time, may overflow the land — overflow 
it, to fertilize, to restore, and beautify ? 

" The mind of Ireland no longer wavers. It has acquired 
the faith, the constancy, the heroism of a predestined martyr. 
It foresees the worst — prepares for the worst. The cross — 
as in Milan — glitters in the haze of battle, and points to 
eternity ! 

"We shall no' longer seek for liberty in the bye-ways. 
On the broad field, in front of the foreign swords, the soul 
of this nation, grown young and chivalrous again, shall 
clothe herself, like the Angel of the Resurrection, in the 
white robe, and point to the sepulchre that is void ; or shall 
mount the scaffold — that eminence on which many a radiant 
transfiguration has taken place — and bequeath to the crowd 
below, a lesson for their instruction, and an idol for their 
worship ! " 

Of a similar character as the scene of the Limerick Ban- 
quet, though not as violent or as savage, was that which 
occurred in the Cork theatre on the night of the 20th of 
September, 1847. The galleries were taken possession of 
by a crowd, representing the " Old Ireland " party, whose 
. Shibboleth just then was— " Who killed O'Connell ? " This 
crowd made but a trifle of breaking down the doors when 



32 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



opposition to their entrance was presented. They formed 
a solid phalanx in the gallery, and seemed determined that 
no speaker on that stage should be heard. With considera- 
ble difficulty O'Brien, Meagher, and their friends obtained 
entrance through the stage door, so dense was the brawling 
mass outside. Denny Lane vainly attempted to obtain a 
hearing for the speakers. Michael Joseph Barry, w T ho was. 
then popular with his townsmen, was equally unsuccessful. 
O'Brien made a stubborn effort to get a hearing, in which 
he only partially succeeded, and finally retired from the 
scene. He made his speech, but it was imperfectly heard. 
When Meagher advanced to the front of the stage, he was 
received with a storm of yells from the upper regions, 
mingled with cheers from the pit and boxes, to which the 
ladies heartily added their approbation of the young orator. 
For five minutes he looked silently on the tumult. Then, 
striking his clenched hand upon the railing which w T as 
temporarily constructed to prevent a rush of the crowd upon 
the stage, he cried out — " If I have to stand here until 
to-morrow, you must hear what I have got to say." The 
sound of his voice stayed the outcries, and he proceeded to 
deliver an oration, the peroration of which is perhaps one of 
the most finished efforts, as well as the strongest illustration 
of his power over the masses. The writer remembers well 
the effect of that burst of eloquence, for he stood by the 
orator's side. It fell amongst those stormy elements like 
the voice upon the waters, bidding them to be still. Italy 
was at that time in the throes of an insurrection. Pius the 
Ninth, then in the first year of his pontificate, was planning 
measures of political amnesty and amelioration. Meagher 
seized upon the news to give effect to his speech, which he 
did in the following splendid language : 

" Ah ! is there nothing, at this day, at this very hour, 
to stir the blood within you ? Do you not hear it ? Does 
it not ring through the soul, and quiver through the brain ? 
Beyond the Alps a trumpet calls the dead nations of Europe 
from their shrouds ! 

" Italy ! at whose tombs the poets of the Christian 
world have knelt and received their inspiration — Italy ! 
amid the ruins of whose forum the orators of the world 
have learned to sway the souls of men, and guide them, like 
the coursers of the sun, through all climes and seasons, 



IN THE CORK THEATRE. 



changing darkness into light, and giving heat to the coldest 
clay — Italy ! from whose radiant skies the sculptor draws 
down the fire that quickens the marble into life, and bids it 
take those wondrous forms, which shall perish only when 
the stars change into drops of blood, and fall to earth — 
Italy ! where religion, claiming the noblest genius as her 
handmaid, has reared the loftiest temples to the Divinity, 
and with a pomp, which in the palaces of the Caesars never 
shone, attracts the proudest children of the earth to the 
ceremonies of her immortal faith — Italy ! the beautiful, the 
brilliant, and the gifted — Italy ! Italy is in arms ! 

" Down for centuries, amid the dust of heroes wasting 
silently away, she has started from her swoon, for the vestal 
fire could not be extinguished. Austria — old, decrepit, 
haggard thief — clotted with the costly blood of Poland — 
trembles as she sheathes her sword, and plays the penitent 
within Ferrara's walls. 

" Glory ! Glory ! to the citizens of Rome, patricians and 
plebeians, who think that liberty is worth a drop of blood, 
and will not stint the treasure to befriend in other lands a 
sluggish, false morality ! 

" Glory ! Glory ! to the maids and matrons of Rome — 
descendants of Cornelia — inheritors of the pride and loveli- 
ness of Nina di Rasseii — who, working scarfs of gold and 
purple for the keenest marksmen, bid the chivalry of their 
houses go forth and bring the vulture, shadowing their 
sunny skies, reeking to the earth ! 

" Glory ! Glory ! to the High Priest, who, within the 
circle of the Seven Hills — whose summits glitter with ten 
thousand virgin bayonets — plants the banner of the Cross, 
and, in that sign, commands the civic guard to strike and 
conquer ! 

" And what can Ireland do, to aid this brilliant nation in 
her struggle ? In rags, in hunger, and in sickness — sitting, 
like a widowed queen, amid the shadows of her pillar 
towers and the gray altars of a forgotten creed — with two 
millions of her sons and daughters lying slain and shroud- 
less at her feet — what can this poor island do ? 

" Weak, sorrowful, treasureless as she is, I believe there 
are still a few rich drops within her heart that she can spare. 

u Perish the law that forbids her to give more ! Perish 
the law that, having drained her of her wealth, forbids her 

c 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



to be the boldest spirit in the fight ! Perish the law which, 
in the language of our young apostle — c our prophet and our 
guide ' — compels her sons to perish in a climate soft as a 
mother's smile — fruitful as God's love ! Perish the law 
which, in the, language of one whose genius I admire, but 
whose apostasy I shall never imitate, ' converts the island, 
which ought to be the most fortunate in the world, into a 
receptacle of suffering and degradation — counteracting the 
magnificent arrangement of Providence — frustrating the 
beneficent designs of God.' " 

During the interval between his arrival in New York and 
the breaking out of the war, Meagher's mind was unembar- 
rassed by the graver thoughts which preceded and followed 
these two epochs, and it was then that his fine social 
qualities were best displayed. While reading law, and 
skimming over novels in Judge Emmett's office ; while 
practising his legal profession, with Malcolm Campbell, 
under the title of Meagher and Campbell, in the thud 
storey natty office in Ann Street, with Bartholomew 
O'Connor, ex-judge and good fellow, Jor a joint tenant ; — 
wmile labouring, or gossiping in the editorial sanctum of the 
Irish News, m the dingy little double room, partitioned off, 
and well pasted over with maps and Irish illusrrations. up a 
crooked stair, he found time For occasional hour of social 
enjoyment, at which times his heart would open to Lis 
friends, and all the good humour of his nature would pour 
forth in a bubbling flood. Public entertainments, too. 
engrossed a portion of his leisure, for his splendid eloquence 
was welcome everywhere. He was the guest of every 
organised society in the city ; but the " Friendly Sons of St. 
Patrick " claimed him annually, first as a guest, and after- 
wards as a member, until, in 1856, he could no longer wash 
down their British loyalty, even with the very best cham- 
pagne, and, as about this time that sentiment was becoming- 
paramount to all national Irish feeling, Meagher left the 
body, so far as to withdraw his presence from its banquets 
in future. 

I have alluded to Meagher's infinite fund of humour and 
lightheartedness. They never left him in all the trying 
circumstances of his life ; — not even under the most trying 
of all, when he had listened to the sentence to be hanged, 
drawn, and quartered ! 



IN CLOXMEL JAIL. 



A writer in the " Dublin Nation" describing Meagher in 
his cell in Clonmel jail, while under sentence of death, says, 
;i His wit, his genial fun, his talents and accomplishments, 
even his high health and spirits, were the inspirations of 
his companions. 

" There was no feverish glare in his gaiety. — no strained 
effort. It was of that natural, healthful sort, that infects 
others spontaneously. Nothing in his person marked the 
captive of romance. — neither hollow cheeks, nor furrowed 
brow, nor neglected beard, nor ungartered hose. The frank 
features had, from long confinement, lost the florid complexion 
which formerly had rather vulgarized them, and were further 
improved by a shade more of thoughtfulness. But the 
bright smile lingered on the lips, and he was still to be dis- 
tinguished by a certain fastidious neatness of person which, 
in one of less intellect, would have degenerated into dandyism. 

" 6 Will you come and visit my cell,' cried Meagher, after 
he had played innumerable games of ball, with all the ardour 
of a boy of fifteen, until brow and bosom glowed with ani- 
mation. 4 Yes, do, pray, show us how you manage to dis- 
guise the fetters, — to drape your situation, as the French 
would say/ gayly replied one of our party. We ascended 
a stone staircase, the walls of which were so painfully white 
rhey made one wink. The very cleanliness oi a jail haa 
something cutting and icy about ir. At length Meagher 
called out, • Halt,' and Ave found ourselves at the end of a 
long corridor, which contained about twenty cells. At the 
door of each hung an enormous iron padlock, to secure the 
prisoners at night. ' That is mine' said Meagher, pointing 
to the fourth or fifth in the row. Was it magic, or a dream, 
or what ? This is a place of punishment ! Why, I never 
saw anything so coquettish, so graceful, so fanciful, so fairy- 
like as this tiny boudoir. Imagine a little room, about the 
size of an ordinary pantry, lighted from the top by a large 
skylight, with bare whitewashed walls, neither fireplace nor 
stove, and a cold stone floor. These were the materials 
Meagher had to work on, and this dreary spot, which would 
have struck a less brave heart with helpless despair, he had 
with his own hands converted into a genuine expression of 
the poetry which formed the basis of his character and 
genius. 

"A warm crimson cloth lined the walls, and at once 



36 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



removed the fever-hospital look of the place. Handsome 
French prints hnng in rich profusion, whose lively colours 
and fresh gildings were fresh and animating. 

;, A pretty sofa bedstead completely filled the farthest 
end of the cell. Bound three sides of it were ranged well- 
stored book-shelves, just within reach of his hand ; he thus 
lay nestled in books, and in the long winter evenings, 
deprived of fire, could still read comfortably. Just over the 
foot of the bed, so that it was the object his eye most 
constantly greeted, was placed a magnificent crucifix carved 
in ivory — so much for the 4 infidel.' 

" Here and there among the pictures hung souvenirs or 
trophies he prized. A battered hat of O'Gorman's which 
had seen the hillside ; an enormous pipe — which had be- 
longed to Robert Blum, the Frankfort patriot ; a chaos of 
netted purses, cigar and watch cases, and many other 
female tokens of interest in the young rebel; a bright warm 
carpet, a table, and two or three chairs, all of tasteful form- 
completed the furniture. An exquisite propriety of cleanli- 
ness gave a singular look to this pleasant spot. An atom 
of dust seemed never to have rested on it. The snowy 
coverings of the bed and dressing-table — the vase of spring 
flowers, so fresh and sparkling, which stood beside his open 
book — the gay pictures, many of them beautiful female 
heads — the newly bound books — all spoke of repose and 
order. It was utterly impossible to imagine one's self in a 
condemned cell ; and such is the influence of external things 
on the mind, that we were all talking and laughing as 
merrily in ten minutes as if the scenes at Clonmel. with 
Monaghan and Blackburne as principal figures, had only 
happened in a Christmas pantomime." 

Thus was Meagher in prison — with a doubtful, although 
judicially pronounced fate before him. The scaffold with 
all its horrors had no depressing influence upon him. He 
was as cheerful in the prison of the condemned, as he was 
resolute in the dock, Having performed his duty with 
fidelity to his country, he was willing to accept all the 
responsibility — be it death, or be it perpetual banishment. 
It was but a few days after the interview above described 
that the four condemned prisoners — Meagher, O'Brien, 
McManus, and O'Donoghue — were conveyed to Dublin 
under an escort of Dragoons. They were hurried off from 



IN VAN DIEMANS LAND. 



o7 



the Ciomnel jail at three o'clock in the rnorning, and were 
far on their route before daylight. There was a design 
planned, and partially prepared, to effect a rescue ; but, 
through treachery on the part of the prison chaplain, the 
purposes of the " conspirators " were divulged to the Gov- 
ernment, and hence the prisoners were carried off with great 
haste. It was stated, but I have no authority to vouch for 
the statement, that the clergyman referred to made a 
personal visit to Dublin Castle to unburden himself of the 
news, confidentially intrusted to him. At all events, the 
facts were communicated to the authorities, and several 
young men were arrested by the military at night, while 
holding a secret (but premature) meeting in i; the Vwlder- 
ness," a little glen outside the town of Clonmel. The 
writer, who was a participant in the scheme, as representa- 
tive from the Cork Council, was not one of the arrested, 
being in the mountains holding converse with the Mulcahies, 
three gallant and gigantic brothers, and other stalwart 
Tipperary farmers, about that time. 



CHAPTER III. 

CONVICT LIFE EN TAX DIEMAX'S LAND — ESCAPE AND 
ALPJVAL IX AMERICA. 

MEAGHER'S life in Van Dieman's Land was not marked 
by much variety, if we except the fact of his marriage, 
which occurred sometime before his escape. The district 
allotted to him, under the privilege of his ticket-of -leave, was 
a mountainous region in the highest point of which there 
nestled a charming piece of water called Lake Sorel, and 
upon the banks of this stood the cottage in which he spent 
his convict life, except when he was out on the mountain 
with his gun and his dog, both of which the " authorities " 
condescendingly permitted him to own ; or traversing the 
mountain roads on his fleet-footed horse, not a 4 * two-forty" 
animal of this day, but something better — a natural creature, 
with the breath of heaven in his nostrils. X o one who ever 
saw Meagher in the saddle could fail to be struck by his 
masterly horsemanship. He looked ever like one of that — ■ 



38 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



" Host which Jason might have led 
On the plains of Thessaly ! " 

In his solitude at Lake Sorel he sometimes luxuriated 
also in a little yachting, in the small boat for which some 
loving memories of the literature of 1848 suggested the 
name " Speranza." Sometimes, too, he would scamper off 
into the convict semi-civilisation of Hobart Town, which 
lay within his district, and dash into the merriment of a 
local election with all the gusto, but less of the hearty 
earnestness, with which he flung himself into the Gal way 
election, a few years before, when Antony O'Flaherty was 
running against the Castle nominee — then Attorney- General 
and now Chief- Justice Monahan. The location of Meagher's 
" ticket-of -leave" home in Van Dieman's Land, and perhaps 
as much as it is necessary to give here, in order to supply a 
picture of his mode and habits of life, is furnished by the 
following sketches from John Mitchel's " Jail Journal" 
Describing the first interview with Meagher, after their 
parting in the Green Street Court-house in Dublin, Mitchel 
— who, in company with his friend and fellow-prisoner, 
John Martin, started from Bothwell to visit Meagher in his 
high mountain home — says in his Journal : 

" It now began to grow dusk, for we had been four hours 
and a half on the way ; and the evening was fast gro wing- 
dark, when we heard the gallop of three horses, and a loud 
laugh well known to me. We went to the door ; and in a 
minute Meagher and O'Doherty had thrown themselves 
from their horses ; and as we exchanged greeting — I know 
not from what impulse, whether from buoyancy of heart, or 
bizarre perversity of feeling — we all laughed till the woods 
rung around ; laughed loud and long and uproariously, till 
two teal rose startled from the reeds on the lake shore, and 
flew screaming to seek a quieter neighbourhood. 

" I suspect there was something hollow in that laughter, 
though at the time it was hearty, vociferous, and spon- 
taneous. But even in laughter the heart is sad ; and curses, 
or tears, just then, might have become us better. 

" Both these exiles looked fresh and vigorous. Kevin 
O'Doherty I had scarcely ever met before ; but he is a fine, 
erect, noble-looking young man, with a face well bronzed 
with air and exercise." 

At a later period Mitchel paid another visit to his friend 



ON THE MOUNTAIN. 



39 



at Lake Sorel. This time Mrs Mitchel was with him. She 
had but recently come with her children to share her 
husband's exile. This is the way Mitchel describes their 
meeting with Meagher on that occasion : — 

"We still ascended, the mountain becoming wilder and 
steeper at every mile, until we were full two thousand feet 
above the plain of Ross. Here an opening among the trees 
gave us a view over the low country we had left, wide, 
arid, and parched in aspect, with ridge after ridge of rugged- 
looking wooded hills stretching far towards the Pacific 
eastward. High and grim to the north-east towered the 
vast Ben Lomond ; and we could trace in the blue distance 
that valley of St Paul's, where we had left O'Brien wander- 
ing on his lonely way. We were now almost on the ridge 
where our track crossed the summit of the western range ; 
we had dismounted, and I was leading the horse up the 
remaining steep acclivity, when we suddenly saw a man on 
the track above us ; he had a gun in his hand, on his head 
a cabbage-tree hat, and at his feet an enormous dog. 
When he observed us he sung out Coo, ee! the cry with 
which people in the bush make themselves heard at a 
distance. Coo, ee! I shouted in reply; when down came 
bounding dog and man together. The man was Meagher, 
who had walked four miles from his cottage to meet us ; the 
dog was Brian, a noble shaggy greyhound, that belonged to 
McManus, but of which Meagher had now the charge. 

44 We continued our ascent merrily, and soon knew — 
though the forest was thick all around us — that we had 
reached the mountain-top, by the fresh breeze that blew on 
our brows, from the other side. 

" And now — how shall I describe the wondrous scene 
that breaks upon us here — a sight to be seen only in 
Tasmania, a land where not only the native productions of 
the country, but the very features of nature herself, seem 
formed on a pattern the very reverse of every model, form, 
and law, on which the structure of the rest of the globe is 
put together ; a land where the mountain-tops are vast lakes, 
where the trees strip of bark instead of leaves, and where 
the cherry-stones grow on the outside of the cherries. 
After climbing full two thousand feet we stand at one 
moment on the brink of the steep mountain, and behold the 
plain of Ross far below ; the next minute, instead of com- 



40 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



mencing our descent into a valley on the opposite side, we 
are on the edge of a great lake, stretching at least seven 
miles to the opposite shore, held in here by the mere sum- 
mits of the mountain-range, and brimming to the very lips 
of the cup or crater that contains it. A cutting of twenty- 
five feet in depth would, at this point, send its waters plung- 
ing over the mountain, to form a new river in the plains of 
E oss. At another part of its shore, to the northwest, a 
similar canal would drain it into the Lake river, which flows 
along the foot of the mountains on that side. As it is, the 
only outlet is through Lake Crescent and the Clyde ; and so 
it comes to fertilize the vale of Both well, and bathe the roots 
of our trees at Xant Cottage. 

" We pass the Dog's-head promontory and enter a rough, 
winding path cut among the trees, which brings us to a quiet 
bay, or deep curve of the lake, at the head of which, facing 
one of the most glorious scenes of fairy-land, with the clear 
waters rippling at his feet, and a dense forest around and 
behind it, stands our friend's quiet cottage, iV little wooden 
jetty runs out some yards into the lake ; and at anchor, near 
the end of the jetty, lies the " Speranza," a new boat built 
at Hobart Town, and hauled up here through Bothwell, a 
distance of seventy-five miles, by six bullocks. 

" On the verandah we are welcomed by the lady of this 
sylvan hermitage, give our horses to Tom Egan to be taken 
care of, and spend a pleasant hour, till dinner-time, saunter- 
ing on the lake shore. After dinner a sail is proposed. 
Jack is summoned, an old sailor kept here by Meagher to 
navigate the boat ; the stern-sheets are spread with opposum 
skins, rugs, and shawls ; the American flag is run up, and 
we sally forth, intending to visit the island, and see how the 
oats and potatoes are thriving. For Meagher means to be 
a great farmer also; and has kept a man on the island 
several months, ploughing, planting, and sowing. The 
afternoon, however, proves rough ; the wind is too much 
ahead, and when a mile or two from the shore we give up 
the trip to the island and put the boat about. She stoops, 
almost gunwale under, and goes flying and staggering home. 
The afternoon had become raw, and we enjoyed the sight of 
the wood-fire illuminating the little crimson parlour and the 
gayly-bound books that loaded the shelves. Pleasant even- 
ing of course, except when we spoke of Ireland, and the 



AS A SOLDIER. 



41 



miserable debris of her puny agitators, which are fast making 
the name of Irishman a word of reproach all over the world. 1 ' 
And so Meagher passed his life in the Tasmanian wilder- 
ness until, by the help of Providence, and P. J. Smyth, and 
the New York Irish Directory, and, more than all perhaps, 
by his own daring courage, after he resigned his parole, 
defied the British jail authorities to arrest him, intrusted 
himself to the bufferings of a stormy sea in an open boat, 
braved the desolation of an uninhabited island for some 
hours, and, after much weary travail, reached Pernambuco, 
and from thence finally landed in New York, as we have 
already stated in a previous chapter. 



CHAPTER IV. 

MEAGHEIi AS A SOLDIEE— HE RAISES AND TAKES GOM s 
MAND OF THE IRISH BKIGADS. 

The first overt act of civil war in the United States — a 
war which endured from April, 1861, to April, 1865, 
occurred on the 12th day of April, 1861, when a formal 
demand was made by General Beauregard, then commanding 
the Confederate forces at Charleston, upon Major Anderson, 
of the U. S. army, to surrender the federal stronghold, Fort 
Sumter, and the property of the general government which 
it contained, into the hands of the government recently 
established at Montgomery, Ala,, and claiming recognition 
as the government of the 4i Confederate States of America." 
How the demand of the insurgent general was met by Maj. 
Anderson, and the result which followed in the terrific bom- 
bardment of Sumter, from the forts at Moultrie, Sullivan's 
Island, and Cumniings' Point, and its surrender on the 13th, 
are known. It is not within the province of this volume to 
dilate upon the political causes which led to the civil war, 
the preliminary acts of which called into existence Meagher's 
Irish Brigade in the Army of the Potomac, an organization 
which, by its valour in the field, in its patient endurance on 
the march, its invaluable labours in the fortifications, and its 
promptness to participate heartily and unflinchingly in every 
battle fought while it continued disintegrated by the fearful 



42 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



losses sustained by the regiments composing it, have entitled 
every man who stood in its ranks to the highest honour 
which a true soldier covets, and to the lasting gratitude of 
the country which it helped to preserve from a disaster the 
most deplorable that could befall any country — national 
dissolution. 

Previous to the attack on Fort Sumter, it was a matter 
of some doubt whether the secession of the Southern States 
would be resisted by force of arms. In the latter end of 
March and the early part of April great indecision was said 
to prevail in the Cabinet councils, and it was only on the 2d 
of the latter month that orders were issued to put the army 
and navy of the United States on a war footing. Even 
when an expedition was fitted out in New York, consisting 
of eight vessels of war and transports, with 26 guns and 
1,380 men, it was still rumoured that the object was to 
settle our claims with Spain, and not to make any coercive 
demonstration against the South. But with the echo of the 
first gun at Sumter, all doubt as to the course to be pursued 
was dispelled, and if any hesitancy existed in the minds of 
Mr Lincoln or his Cabinet it vanished then. The concilia- 
tory policy of Gen. Scott to let our erring sisters depart in 
peace received no favour. The whole people of the North 
rose as one man to resent the insult offered to the National 
Flag. Hence the call issued by the President on the 15th 
of April for 75,000 of the militia of all the States, was 
answered with a unanimity with which no appeal of a similar 
kind was ever received before. The quota of Xew York 
under this call was about 13.000 men; and they were 
speedily furnished. In the Metropolis the most ardent 
enthusiasm prevailed amongst all classes. The ranks of the 
militia regiments were rapidly filled up. Men of all profes- 
sions and occupations hurried forward to sustain the national 
cause — judges, lawyers, merchants, journalists, men of all 
parties, all religious denominations, and all nationalities. 
Foremost among them were to be found the citizens of Irish 
birth and extraction, who almost en masse flung themselves 
into the movement, which had set the heart of the entire 
nation throbbing with patriotism. 

The Sixty-Ninth Eegiment Xew York State Militia, then 
commanded by Col. Michael Corcoran, was among the first 
to respond to the call. This regiment and its gallant 



DEPARTURE OF THE SIXTY-NINTH. 



id 



colonel had just made themselves famous by refusing to 
parade in honour of the Prince of Wales on his visit to New 
York, for which act Col. Corcoran was subjected to the form 
of a Court Martial, the proceedings of which were abandoned 
subsequently, public opinion strongly sustaining him in the 
alleged violation of military rules. The Sixty-Ninth was 
composed exclusively of Irishmen, all of whom had ex- 
perienced the malignity of British rule in Ireland, and some 
of them being political exiles from their native country. 
Under these circumstances their refusal to participate in a 
fulsome ovation to the representative of the British Crown, 
was heartily sustained by the great majority of the people. 
While they thus declined the service demanded of them in 
a street parade, on the 11th of October, 1860, the Sixty- 
Ninth were among the foremost in 1861 to proffer their 
services in the field of battle in defence of the Constitution 
and the flag of their countiy. The same spirit which 
animated them permeated all classes of Irish citizens. Al- 
though by conviction as by tradition united to the' party of 
the Democracy, and politically opposed to the party then in 
power, no factious opposition restrained the Irish citizens 
from giving a generous support to the Administration in its 
attempt to suppress rebellion. In the ranks of nearly every 
regiment in the Federal army, but more especially those 
raised in New York, citizens of Irish birth were largely 
represented. 

The services of the Sixty-Ninth being accepted the reg£ j 
ment left New York for Washington on the 23d April., *x861. 
Barely was there witnessed such a scene of enttn^iasm in 
the Metropolis as when this gallant regiment.; 'numbering a 
thousand rank and file, marched down Broadway from their 
headquarters en route to the National Capital, to participate 
in its defence. So great was the anxiety to join the ranks 
that 3,000 men offered themselves, but. by orders from head- 
quarters Col. Corcoran was compehVd to accept only the 
regulation number of one thousand, which, with the officers 
and band, made in all 1130 men.. At that critical period 
the departure of the Sixty-Nint/n, as well as the other 
militia regiments who started ab out the same time, was an 
important event. From an ea;iiy hour in the morning 
immense crowds of men, women a and children from all parts 
of the city might be seen flockr/ng into Broadway until, as 



44 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 



the day advanced, that highway was so completely blocked 
up that neither omnibuses, carriages, nor carts could find a 
passage-way. Through the long weary hours of the day, 
under a sun almost as hot as that of July, this dense crowd 
filled the side-walks. They had come from Jersey city, 
Hoboken, Brooklyn, Williamsburg, and from localities all 
along the Harlem railroad as far as Hartford, Connecticut, 
to witness the departure of the sturdy Sixty-Ninth. The 
march from the headquarters in Prince Street, which took 
place rather late in the day owing 1 to the delay on the part 
of the authorities in distributing arms to the men, was a 
perfect ovation. The fire companies were drawn up in lino 
and saluted the heroes as they passed. Several civic 
societies joined in the procession. At Canal, Grand, and 
Cortlandt Streets the excitement was intense, and when the 
steamer, James Adger, moved off from the pier amid the 
plaudits of the multitude, the firing of cannon, and the 
vessels at the docks dipping- their flags in recognition of the 
valour and self-sacrifice of the gallant fellows who so 
promptly threw themselves into the front of danger, the 
scene was equally sublime and exhilarating. Many were 
the thrilling scenes enacted on that day which must have 
tried the souls of the departing heroes ; the final grasp of 
the hand from friendly bystanders as each recognized an 
acquaintance in the column ; the warmer salute of wife, and 
sister, and sweetheart, who would occasionally burst through 
the ranks to take a tearful and passionate farewell, with a 
demonstrative eloquence of grief peculiar to the Irish female 
heart. AVhen the James Adger moved off from the pier 
amid the tiv^ultuous plaudits of the assembled masses, there 
was many a o:*e in that vast crowd who had no voice to 
speak her pride, or utter her lamentation, but who might 
well have said, as ahe gazed on the fast-fading deck of the 
vessel.— 

\ " So long 

As he could make me with his eye or ear 
Distinguish him from others, he did keep 
The deck, with glove, or hat, or handkerchief, 
Still waving as the fits and stirs of his mind 
Could best express how slow his soul sailed on — 
How swift his shin.*' 

We dwell upon the participation of the Sixty-Ninth in 
the opening scenes of the war, because in that regiment was 



EXTERS THE ARMY. 



45 



in a measure to be found the nucleus of the Irish Brigade, 
subsequently commanded by Thomas Francis Meagher. It 
was upon the officers and men who shared the perils of the 
first three months' campaign, and acquitted themselves so 
splendidly at the first battle of Bull Bun, that Meagher 
depended for the frame-work of that Brigade whose name 
shall be ever memorable in American history. And well 
was the Sixty-Ninth represented in the new organization by 
such men as Patrick Kelly, James Cavanagh, James Kelly, 
Col. Quinlan, Lieutenants Hart, Smith, McQuade, Maxwell 
O'Sullivan, and other officers who distinguished themselves 
in the three months' campaign, and nearly all of whom 
subsequently sealed their devotion to the Irish Brigade, and 
the cause for which it was organized, with their blood, and 
some of them with their lives. 

It was at this juncture that Thomas Francis Meagher 
entered the military profession, in which he since performed 
such signal service to the country, and won so much honour 
for his own name as a soldier. Resolved not to remain 
behind those of his countrymen who in their capacity as a 
portion of the State militia had already gone forth to battle 
at the cry, then hourly repeated, 4 - Washington is in danger!" 
Meagher raised a company of Zouaves for the Sixty-Ninth, 
a band of dashing intelligent young Irishmen, a hundred 
and forty-five strong, and being chosen captain he proceeded 
with them to join the regiment, then stationed in the vicinity 
of Washington. 

After the disastrous battle of Bull Bun, a cloud over- 
shadowed the National cause. The enemies of the republic, 
both in the North and South, were jubilant ; its friends, for 
a time, disheartened. The monarchical element of Europe 
exulted in the anticipated decay of our institutions, and its 
statesmen pointed with scoffing fingers at what they, in 
their shallow philosophy, believed to be the failure of " the 
experiment' 5 of self-government. But the inestimable prize 
of a great united nation, a government and laws which 
protected alike those born under the national flag and those 
who voluntarily swore allegiance to it — and thus made the 
country their own, not by accident, but by choice — was not 
thus easily to be surrendered. The clouds of fear and 
doubt soon broke into a storm of patriotic inspiration. The 
people, who were for the moment stricken with the vain fear 



46 THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 

that the Union could not be held together, because a few 
thousand untrained and inexperienced troops, who had never 
been under fire, were defeated in the first shock of battle, 
soon returned to their faith in the solidity of the Republic, 
and resolved that its integrity must be preserved at every 
sacrifice. Fresh troops were raised almost spontaneously, 
and preparations were made by the Government to bring an 
effective army into the field. 

Even upon the Irish mind, which was always faithful to 
the flag, and from its natural temperament was never 
inclined to be despondent, an impression of partial alienation 
was made in this critical period. Party predilections and 
prejudices for a time swayed it, and almost got the better of 
it. Many of those with whom Irish- American citizens were 
accustomed to act in political life, entertained doubts of the 
capacity of the Government to maintain the Union unbroken. 
Some honestly questioned the wisdom of enforcing an alliance 
which was obnoxious to one of the parties interested ; and a 
few held that there was no constitutional power existing in 
the government to compel the Southern States to remain 
within the Union after they had declared by the voice of their 
legislatures and conventions to withdraw their consent to the 
original compact. It was sit this critical moment, and under 
these somewhat inauspicious circumstances, that Meagher 
appealed to his countrymen to form an Irish Brigade, which 
it was intended to place under the command of Gen. Shields, 
a soldier who hud already prominently established in his own 
person the military reputation of his race. With this inten- 
tion Meagher applied to the Secretary of War for authority 
to raise a brigade, which he immediately received by tele- 
gram. As an evidence of the vehemence with which 
Meagher at this time conjured his countrymen to join the 
ranks of the national army, I will quote a few extracts from 
a speech delivered at Jones 7 Woods, at the festival for the 
benefit of the widows and orphans of the soldiers of the 
Sixty-Ninth who fell at the battle of Bull Run : — 

" Never, I repeat it, was there a cause more sacred, nor 
one more just, nor one more urgent. No cause more sacred, 
for it comprehends all that has been considered most desir- 
able, most valuable, most ennobling to political society and 
humanity at large. No cause more just, for it involves no 
scheme of conquest, or subjugation, contemplated no dis- 



SPEECH AT JONES' WOODS. 



47 



franchisement of the citizen, excluding the idea of provinci- 
alism and inferiority, aiming only at restoration of franchisee! 
powers and property, which were enjoyed by one people and 
one republic, and which, to be the means of happiness, for- 
tune, and renown to millions, must be exercised and held in 
common under one code of national laws, one flag, and one 
Executive. 

" No cause more urgent, for intrigues, perfidies, armed 
legions, the hatred and cupidity of foreign courts assail it ; 
and every reverse with which it is visited serves as a pretext 
for the desertion of the coward, the misrepresentation of the 
politician, whose nation is his pocket. The proffered com- 
promises of men who, in the name of peace, would capitulate 
to treason and accept dishonour ; encourage the designs of 
kings and queens and knaves, to whom this great common- 
wealth, with all its wondrous acquisitions and incalculable 
promise, has been, until within the last few weeks, a source 
of envy, vexation, alarm, and discomfiture, presenting as it 
did nobler scenes of activity and progress than their estates 
could show — sheltering and advancing the thousands whom 
their rods and bayonets had sw T ept beyond the sea, and, like 
the mighty genius of the ocean confronting the ship of 
Vasco de Gama, uprising here to repel the intrusion which 
would establish on the seas and islands of the New World 
the crowned monopolies and disabling domination of the 
Old. Will the Irishmen of New fork stand by this cause — 
resolutely, heartily, with inexorable fidelity, despite of all 
the sacrifices it may cost, despite of all the dangers 
it may compel them, despite of the bereavements and 
abiding gloom it may bring on such homes as this day 
miss the industry and love of the dead soldiers of the Sixty- 
Ninth, but in some measure to console and succour which 
the festivities of this day have taken place ? For my part, 
I ask no Irishman to do that which I myself am not prepared 
to do. My heart, my arm, my life are pledged to the national 
cause, and to the last it will be my highest pride, as I con- 
ceive it to be my holiest duty and obligation, to share its 
fortunes. I care not to w r hat party the Chief Magistrate of 
the Republic has belonged. I care not upon what plank or 
platform he may have been elected. The platform disappears 
before the Constitution, under the injunction of the oath he 
took on the steps of the Capitol the day of his inauguration. 



4s 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



The party disappears in the presence of the nation — and as 
the Chief Magistrate, duly elected and duly sworn, is bound 
to protect and administer the national property for the benefit 
of the nation, so should every citizen concur with him in 
loyal and patriotic action, discarding the mean persuasions 
and maxims of the . local politician — and, substituting the 
national interests, the national efficiency, the national hon- 
our, for the selfishness, the huckstering, or the vengeance 
of a party." 

Meagher at once set to work to organize a brigade. He 
authorized Col. Nugent to raise the first regiment, to be 
known as the Sixty-Ninth New York Volunteers, which the 
colonel did most efficiently and with little delay. The 
Zouaves, which served under Meagher in the three months' 
campaign, were called together b} r their old commander, and 
from among them he selected the officers of the Second 
Regiment of the Brigade. He then proceeded to organize 
the batteries. Captain William Hogan, an experienced 
artillery officer, who formerly commanded the "Napper 
Tandy Light Artillery," of Brooklyn, enlisted one battery, 
and took command of it. Captain McMahon, who served 
as first lieutenant in the Sixty-Ninth militia, enlisted men for 
the second batteiy, and also took command of that organ- 
ization. Enlistment went on briskly in New York. Men 
flocked in crowds to the headquarters of the brigade at 
No. 596 Broadway, above the Metropolitan Hotel, and were 
enrolled. The press of the city was loud in its commenda- 
tion of the patriotism of the Irish citizens. At that time — 
it is worthy of note and highly honourable to the gallant 
fellows who then joined the service — there was no bounty 
offered by the State or the Government, as at a subsequent 
period ; and that there was not one of those who enlisted 
who could not have earned at his ordinary civil occupation 
ten times more than the scanty soldier's pay of thirteen 
dollars a month. Yet they cheerfully resigned everything 
— home, comfort, and competence, to accept the hardships, 
discomforts, and dangers of a soldier's life ; many of them 
to meet the stem terrors of death in defence of their country. 
There were busy scenes in that long unfurnished room, 
where there was little, one would suppose, either to attract 
or inspire. A solitary chair, a few benches, a single desk, 
a few placards on the walls announcing that men would be 



ORGANIZES A BRIGADE. 



4 r j 



received there for the Irish Brigade — this was the extent of 
the furniture. Yet here, with all its uninviting interior, 
was created that historic brigade which so often turned the 
tide of battle, and in so many bloody fields won an im- 
perishable renown. But there was a mind at work in that 
room — unprepossessing as it was — endowed with marvellous 
gifts to control by its firmness, and to win by its genial 
instincts, — to draw towards itself all that was refined, 
manly, and honest which came within the circle of its 
w r ondrous fascination ; for Meagher was present there day 
by day, attending to all the details of the organization, until 
the brigade was sent to Fort Schuyler. 

The organization in New York being in a condition of 
progress which left no doubt of its success, Meagher 
proceeded to Boston, and at an immense meeting held in 
the Music Hall, presided over by Gov. Andrew, called upon 
his countrymen to rally in defence of the Constitution. In 
his speech on that occasion he aroused the enthusiasm of the 
Boston people to the highest pitch. The Boston Post, in 
speaking of it, said : — " His speech ere this has been read 
by thousands, yet its effect upon his auditors can only be 
guessed at. More argumentative throughout than he is 
wont to be, he plainly told the Irish- American his duty at 
this crisis. **•**» yy e are gratified that Col. 
Meagher has received so solid and satisfactory an assurance 
of the interest the citizens of Boston take in the new Irish 
Brigade, and of their desire to see the gallant Shields in 
command of a body of men of which he may feel proud." 

The organization of the Twenty-Eighth and Twenty-Ninth 
Massachusetts Regiments was the result of Meagher's efforts 
in Boston. But when their organization was nearly com- 
plete, Gov. Andrew, breaking faith with Col. Meagher and 
the gallant Irishmen who responded to his appeals, took 
possession of these regiments for a time, and they were 
therefore altogether separated from the Irish Brigade. True 
to the mean and miserable instincts begot of ignorance, and 
that ungenerous and stupid policy which has controlled all 
his actions in regard to citizens of foreign birth, Gov. 
Andrew endeavoured to withhold these regiments from the 
Irish Brigade, and appointed natives of Massachusetts as 
their officers, to the exclusion of every Irishman. Meagher, 
however, had afterwards the satisfaction of having both 



50 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



regiments under his command — first the Twenty-Ninth, and 
then the Twenty- Eighth. The Twenty-Ninth, which had 
become exclusively a Yankee regiment, fought with the 
Irish Brigade all through the Peninsular campaign from 
Fair Oaks to Harrison's Landing, and subsequently at 
Antietam, and fought so gallantly and assimilated so heartily 
with the Brigade, that Meagher used to say that they were 
" Irishmen in disguise." The Twenty-Eighth Massachusetts 
was substituted for the Twenty-Ninth a few days before the 
first battle of Fredericksburg. The Twenty-Eighth had 
always preserved its Irish character and organization. It 
carried the green colours, and at the time it joined the Irish 
Brigade w r as commanded by as splendid a specimen of an 
Irishman and a soldier as ever served a friend or confronted 
a battery, Col. Richard Byrnes. He was formerly a 
sergeant in the regular United States Cavalry, and was 
killed at Fredericksburg while in command of his regiment. 
A more gallant or devoted officer never fell in the ranks of 
battle. He was endowed with all the social and sterling 
qualities which endear a man most closely to his fellows. 

While in Boston on this mission, Meagher made a 
magnificent speech in the Music Hall on the 23d of June, 
which w r as intended as an ample explanation of the reasons 
which induced him to enter the army on the side of the 
Government. As a brilliant piece of imagery, remarkable 
also for its lofty sentiments, it has never been excelled by 
the brilliant orator himself. It is thus worthy of a place in 
full in this volume, but I must reserve it for a new chapter. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE BOSTON SPEECH AT MUSIC HALL. 

On the 23d of June, 1863, a vast crowd assembled at 
Music Hall, Boston, to hear an appeal from Col. Meagher in 
behalf of the Irish Brigade. 

Meagher commenced his speech by referring to the 
many battle-fields on which the Irish soldier has distin- 
guished himself in Europe and the far East, claiming that 
his footprints have been left in almost every camp, and on 



SPEECH AT MUSIC HALL. 



51 



almost every battle-field of modern times. " In most of 
these quarrels which I have enumerated," he said — " in 
most of these causes to which I have referred, it is not ex- 
aggeration for me to say, that the Irish have distinguished 
themselves pre-eminently. Some of these quarrels, and 
some of these causes have been excellent, exemplary, unim- 
peachable ; others have been of little or no consequence ; 
others have been bad; the last that I have mentioned 
has been execrable. 

" To build up the power of England, to establish her 
ascendancy in every part of the world, this I, for one, can 
never estimate as a cause for which I would hand the laurel 
to a single Irish soldier. But good or bad, weighty or 
trivial, commendable or execrable, the valour of the Irish 
soldier has been eminent and conspicuous, though there may 
have been some misgivings, and 4 compunctious visitings' on 
the part of those who fought, that the cause was not 
all that they desired. But at last, having traversed the 
world, and flashed his sword under every sky, the Irish sol- 
dier has here, upon this continent, at this hour, a cause, the 
justice, the sanctity, the grandeur of which can neither be 
exaggerated nor impeached. 

u What is that cause ? Is it the cause of the Govern- 
ment, which, legitimately elected, the expression of the pop- 
ular will, should be implicitly, unequivocally, and absolutely 
obeyed ? They who affront this Government, and they who 
refuse to it allegiance, strike not at the Government, but at 
the people, 

" Who is at arms, and who strikes against this Govern- 
ment ? The hot, violent, and inordinate Southerner. And 
why? What charge of oppression has he to base his armed 
resistance to the Government upon ? What single grievance 
is recorded upon his banner to justify his revolt ? What 
inch of his territory was invaded before his overt act of 
treason % What single guaranty for his State rights which 
the Constitution gives him, was in the slightest degree 
violated or impaired 1 In vain in all their speeches ; in 
vain in all their apologies for their revolt ; in vain even in 
all their rhapsodies, which their partisans here and elsewhere 
pour forth, shall we look to find the least substantial reason 
for that armed rebellion which has convulsed the country. 
So far from having been the wronged party, so far from 



52 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER, 



having been the party in subjection, the Southerner has 
been the dominant party. For over five-and-fifty years he 
has been the ruling party. He has sat in the Presidential 
chair during that period, extending over half a century, and 
more than two-thirds the existence of this Republic. But 
in this very fact we find the provocation, or, at all events, 
the reason (if it is not a perversion of terms to use that 
word in this connection) for his revolt ; for so accustomed 
was he to the luxuries of office, to the domination and power 
that it brought, that he could not reconcile himself to the 
decision of the popular will, which transferred the Executive 
power to other hands. In other words, he substitutes — 
instead of the ballot-box, which has heretofore been con- 
sidered not only sacred and inviolable, but conclusive — he 
substitutes for the rule of the ballot-box, the Mexican rule, 
which is the rule of the bayonet and the cartridge-box. 
But against the will of the majority of the people, freely 
and constitutionally expressed as it was, and announced 
emphatically, by one who, on account of his private charac- 
ter and his high intellectual attainments, I wish to speak 
with all due respect — announced by John C. Breckinridge 
(who is now the boldest and most dauntless apologist for 
the revolution) to be the fair and conclusive expression of 
the popular will, the Southerner rises up and declares, that 
rather than submit to this decision, he will rend the Com- 
monwealth in twain; and although the result may be to 
doom him to political inferiority, still his ambition is such, 
that he is almost ready to exclaim with Lucifer, that he 
would 4 rather reign in hell, than serve in heaven/ 

" 4 But,' they say, ' a man by the name of Abraham 
Lincoln was elected/ Well, was not Abraham Lincoln 
qualified ? Was he not of the proper age ? Was not he 
perfectly white ? Was his blood attainted ? Was there a 
curl in his hair? Physically, was there the slightest 
incident which would have impaired or impeached the 
validity of his election ? c Well, no, he was elected on an 
obnoxious platform ! ' What was that platform ? I really 
forget Avhat that platform was. No matter what it was, no 
matter upon what platform the President may have been 
elected ; no matter by what processions of illuminated men 
his campaign may have been conducted; no matter what 
appeals may have been made to what some gentlemen may 



SPEECH AT MUSIC HALL. 



53 



have considered an excess of humanitariamsm — the moment- 
he took the oath from Chief Justice Taney to support the 
Constitution of the United States, that moment the platform 
disappeared from view, and we beheld nothing but the 
Constitution. But whether this was the case, or would 
have been the case, or not, with an impetuosity character- 
istic of the region in which they live, the Southerners gave 
the President no opportunity either to make good his oath, 
or to prove that in his estimation the Chicago platform was 
superior to the Constitution of the United States. They 
advanced still further ; and, granting what I have said, that 
the Constitution of the United States is superior to any 
platform, however elaborated or stringent, which a party 
ever constructed, they point indignantly, and with some 
irascibility, to the doing and saying of some political writers 
and speakers in this latitude, and they say — 6 Our favourite 
institutions have been vilified ; there has been Horace 
Greeley, in New York, writing against us with all the gall 
which his pen can distil ; and there has been Wendell 
Phillips, still further North, venting his vicious eloquence 
upon these institutions, and upon our system of society and 
labour.' Well, are Southern sensibilities so exquisite that 
they cannot stand the vilification of their institutions ? Does 
abuse, however virulent and vicious it may be, justify in 
any case revolution ? What good, I might ask with some 
humour and a good deal of sense, what good are democratic 
institutions, if, under those institutions philippics are not 
tolerated? Besides, might not we reciprocate (I will not 
say recriminate) these accusations ? But I will only remind 
the South that their speakers have been just as abusive of 
the North as the Northern speakers have been abusive of 
the South. 

" In a word, we find that there is not one substantial 
reason or pretext for this revolution. If Wisconsin, in some 
of her State laws, has been unfaithful or hostile to the 
South — if Massachusetts (I say it with all respect) has 
been unfaithful or hostile in any of her State laws to the 
South — if Indiana or Illinois has been so — the Union, at all 
events, cannot be accused of such hostility; the Union has 
been faithful to the South. So said the Emperor of Russia 
the other day; so say we here to-night ; and so will impar- 
tial history inexorably decide. 



54 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



" But here is war — war amongst citizens — war amongst 
brothers — war that brings destruction into families that have 
been interwoven, and States that have been almost identified 
by commerce and by social relations with each other. How 
unnatural this war ! How infamous ! How horrible ! But 
who began it ? Does not South Carolina stand this day in 
the presence of all that blood which is rising from the fields 
and woods of Virginia, from the mountain gorges of the 
Alleghanies, from the prairies of Missouri — does not South 
Carolina stand to-day, as these red mists rise to Heaven, 
and feel conscience-smitten that it was she who commenced 
this deadly fray ? 

88 It is unnecessary for me to historically recapitulate the 
incidents which step by step — each step quicker than the 
other — have brought the country to the terrible pass in 
which now its honour is at stake, and its dearest interests 
are imperilled. But the apologist of the Southerner, ad- 
mitting all this, granting that the violent South has been the 
first to strike the internecine blow, in paroxysm of sanctity 
exclaims, 8 But let us have peace !' Peace ! Peace ! when 
the ships bearing that flag which no foreign enemy ever in- 
sulted without redress being demanded and obtained, have 
been taken into the rebel ports as prizes, or burned, or sunk! 
Peace ! when forts which would have been impregnable to 
any force but that of fraud have been captured ! Peace ! 
when mints, which in other countries would have had armed 
guards at the doors to protect them from the suspected 
people, have been invaded and our treasure carried off ! 
Peace ! when our custom-houses have been ransacked ! 
Peace ! when the inoffensive messengers of commerce that 
Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania have 
sent forth upon the seas, have been overhauled, and their 
crews carried into port as though they were pirates, instead 
of those who laid violent hands on them ! The Government 
that would counsel peace at such a moment, under such cir- 
cumstances, with such a load of dishonour upon its head, 
with such a harvest of insult to thresh out, such a Govern- 
ment would indeed deserve to perish. 

88 But whence comes this cry of peace 1 It comes from 
conspirators at the North, in secret league with the more 
honest and courageous recusants at the South. Who are 
they ? Nobody will accuse me of unfairly aspersing the 



SPEECH AT MUSIC BALL. 



55 



Democratic party. On the two occasions when I had the 
honour as a citizen of recording my vote in a Presidential 
election it has been recorded for the Democratic candidates. 
Upon all occasions I have been identified with that party, 
and probably when we shall resume our former condition of 
peaceful strife (if it is not an Irishism to make use of 
such a phrase) I shall vote as I have hitherto done. But 
now I am no Democrat. Of me, at all events, it shall not 
be written upon my grave, should I fall in this cause, 
as was written of an illustrious countryman of mine — 4 He 
gave up to party what was meant for mankind.' 

" Having said so much to dissipate any growing impres- 
sion that there might be that I am radically hostile to the 
Democratic party, or that I have swerved away from it, I 
do not hesitate to say that the conspirators of the North 
are Democrats. The editors of the New York Daily News 
are Democrats, or profess to be so ; so the editors of the 
New York Day Book, of the Journal of Commerce, and also 
of the Freeman's Appeal — who, making his last appeal — 
was gratified by seclusion within the aqueous walls of Fort 
Lafayette. And why this cry? Because they see that the 
Government prosecuting this war with vigour and intrepi- 
dity, and sustained by earnest enthusiasm, and the liberal 
resources, by the treasure and blood of the people, will 
maintain itself. Unable to grapple with the great question 
of war or no war ; not bold or frank enough to stand 
up without disguise, and claim that the Southerners are in 
the right and the Northerners are in the wrong — for we 
must use these geographical distinctions in speaking of this 
matter, though I shrink from them with aversion — these men 
come forward with the word 4 Peace ' on their lips, that so 
they may deal a mortal blow on this Government and its 
just rights. With them is the injunction of Lady Macbeth — 

4 To beguile the hour, look like the hour — 
Bear welcome in your lip, your eye, your hand ; 
Look like the flower, but be the serpent under it.' 

"Not content, however, with this general exclamation 
of peace, which as a natural consequence they well know 
finds an echo in almost every generous and even every 
soldier breast, they address themselves especially to every 
Irishman. They have a particular partiality for us ; they 



58 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



have a most keen and affectionate solicitude, lest we should 
commit ourselves, or compromise ourselves ; should take 
any step which might injure our position in the Common - 
wealth hereafter, and they bid us to remember, first of all, 
that in the States of Connecticut and Massachusetts, some 
few years ago, four or five, it may be six, some Irish 
military companies were disbanded. Of that act, you know 
that here or not far from this place I did not hesitate to 
pronounce my unqualified condemnation. It was an act in 
violent contradiction to the spirit of our American institu- 
tions and the American Constitution ; and if it had been 
imitated in the other States, it might perhaps have deprived 
the Federal Government at this hour of the most willing 
hearts and quickest arms that are now engaged in maintain- 
ing the honour and supremacy of the national flag. But for 
my part, I would consider that my allegiance to the United 
States, to its Chief Magistracy, and to its flag, was an 
equivocal and capricious allegiance if it did not forgive even 
such insults ; and if, forgetting them, I did not with a 
generous enthusiasm resent by a more loyal adherence to 
the Constitution the insult which was in contradiction of it. 

" The impatient and intense alacrity with which the 
adopted citizens of the United States, German as well as 
Irish, have bounded into the conflict, proves how unworthy 
and unjust, and false and scandalous was this proscription. 
Here at this hour I proclaim it in the centre of that city 
where this insult was offered to the Irish soldier — 4 Know- 
nothingism , is dead. This war, if it brought no other 
excellent and salutary fruits, brought with it this result, that 
the Irish soldier will henceforth take his stand proudly by 
the side of the native-born, and will not fear to look him 
straight and sternly in the face, and tell him that he has 
been equal to him in his allegiance to the Constitution. 
But then, on a par with such arguments and partaking of 
their character, arguments have been addressed personally 
to myself. These peace-makers, these apostles of submis- 
sion, these propagandists of national dishonour and national 
ruin, these meek and yet these mischievous gentlemen say 
to me, 6 Oh, you were once a revolutionist, and ^Yhy should 
you not be a revolutionist now I ' 

" Xow it is a most distressing thing if a gentleman 
appears once in a certain character, that he is never to 



SPEECH AT MUSIC HALL. 



57 



change that character, but under all circumstances, in every 
climate, and on every stage, is to be the same. If that 
were so, you could not give me credit for versatility of 
genius, to which, perhaps, I may lay claim, because, having 
been a revolutionist in Ireland, I am a conservative in 
America. And what I say of myself, I say of hundreds 
and thousands of my countrymen and of Germans and other 
European nationalities — as they were revolutionists inEurope, 
they are conservatives in the United States. And the 
reason why, here in the United States, under this Constitu- 
tion, under the working of its equal laws, under the popular 
sanction, which industry, and intellect, and all just claims 
and enterprises obtain, the European revolutionist finds that 
security for his individuality, and without surrendering 
honour in the nation which he faced death to acquire for 
himself, and his country across the sea, is because here the 
dream, which was to him a burning dream, by day as well 
as by night, has been realised ; it is because here, no wast- 
ing theories — impeding which were bayonets and dungeons, 
and ultimately scaffolds — disturb his heart or brain ; and in 
the consolidation of that republicanism to which he aspired 
at home, he beheld all that his ambition ascended to, all that 
his arm would strive for ; it is because here the avenues to 
honour, to fortune, to civic renown, and to political power, 
which were inexorably closed to him by the kings and 
queens of the Old World, have been flung open to him by 
the genius of the Constitution, the angel of liberty which 
stands at the gates of those avenues, not as the angel stood 
at the gate of Paradise, with flaming sword, to repel ap- 
proach, but- to invite all to enter, and share the advantages 
which are beyond. 

4 * As for the cause of Ireland, and for the cause of the 
South, to these same apologists of the South — these peace- 
makers, these apostles of submission, these propagandists of 
national dishonour and ruin, when they ask me how it is 
possible that while I contended for the independence of 
Ireland, I am opposed to the independence of the South, I 
answer this — and I trust there is not a single Irishman here 
who will gainsay it — had Ireland been under the enjoyment 
of such privileges and such rights, and such a guaranteed 
independence as South Carolina enjoyed, I would not have 
been here to-night, the scaffold would not have been stained 



58 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



with one drop of martyr's blood, and Ireland would have 
been spared many a generation of martyrs and exiles. 

" But not only by the apologists of the South, but by 
Southern gentlemen themselves, by writers, arguments 
similar to those which have been mentioned, and yet more 
personal perhaps, have been addressed to me. It would 
seem from statements which appeared in some of the 
Southern papers, before the postal communication was cut 
off, as if I were under some obligation to join the South and 
pledge to them my sword. My friends know that I have a 
somewhat retentive memory, and I have taxed and vexed 
this memory to know by what means I have incurred the 
slightest obligation to the South, unless, indeed, it be this 
— that one winter's day I took the steamer from Xew York 
to Charleston, and there gratuitously delivered a lecture 
which added eight hundred dollars to a fund for the erection 
of a monument to the memory of Calhoun. 

6i Perhaps, indeed, that act of mine in attestation of my 
respect of the character and abilities of John C. Calhoun, 
imposed an additional obligation on me, and I must also 
give up my blood, whatever value there is in that. As the 
South have distinguished themselves of late by their finan- 
cial transactions, I will not pretend to differ from them on 
this question of finance, but I am not prepared to draw my 
sword with them. I shall only clo so on one contingency, 
and that is, when the South joins the North. I have had, 
indeed, many true and devoted friends in the South, and 
have spent many pleasant days there. Some of my 
countrymen had done me the honour, there, to enrol them- 
selves in a military company under my name ; but the mo- 
ment I organized a company in Xew York in favour of the 
Government, they passed a series of indignant resolutions, 
stating that, inasmuch as I had proved recreant to the prin- 
ciples which had endeared me to my fellow-countrymen and 
the world, the name of the 4 Meagher Guards ' should be 
blotted out from the colours and the books of the company, 
and that of the 'Emerald Light Guards' be substituted 
therefor. The 4 Hibernian Eenevolent Society' of Charles- 
ton, I saw by a paper, passed a resolution erasing my name 
as an honorary member of the society, which was the first 
intimation I had that such a membership was conferred upon 
me. It must have been very honorary, inasmuch as, on one 



SPEECH AT MUSIC HALL. 



59 



or two occasions, when in Charleston professionally, I had 
to pay considerable rent for the use of their hall. I speak 
of these things in perfect good-humour. I must add that 
no hospitality or honours which could be lavished upon me 
would justify, on my part, even inactivity where the Fede- 
ral Government, stricken at by Southern friends, was in peril. 
In such a case my duty to the Government supersedes all 
other considerations. 

" Hence it is that I have appeared in arms for the 
National Government ; and hence it is that I have already 
and do now invoke my countrymen to take up arms in the 
same righteous cause. Will they not obey this invocation ? 
Will they not press on and imitate their gallant countrymen 
who recently, under the gallant Mulligan, with only nine 
hundred men sustained themselves for four days against 
four thousand men, and surrendered at last because for two 
days they had no water, and who thereby gave the most 
convincing proof of their fidelity to their country. Ought 
we on the Eastern frontier to be less decided in our devotion 
to the country or less generous in our evidence of it ? 

i; I will not appeal to the gratitude of Irishmen in this 
invocation to arms. I will not remind them that when 
driven from their own land, when their huts were pulled 
down or burned above their heads, when turned out by the 
roadside or into the ditches to die, when broken in fortune, 
and when all hope was lost, the Irishmen came here and had 
a new life infused into them, a fertile soil beneath their feet, 
a favouring sunshine over their heads, and found thousands 
to give them encouraging and sustaining hands. 

;i I will not remind my countrymen of the sympathy and 
substantial aid which the people of America have given them 
in all their political struggles. I will not remind them of the 
sympathies then eloquently and enthusiastically expressed, 
what thousands upon thousands of dollars they showered 
into the popular exchequer, when under the champion- 
ship of a mighty tribune, the great contest for Catholic 
rights and the removal of Catholic disabilities was 
raging. I will not remind them that while Brazil, Buenos 
Ayres, New Grenada, almost any country with a favouring 
soil or climate is equally open to them, this is the only 
country where the Irish people can reconstruct themselves 
and become a power, I will not remind them that whilst at 



60 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



home no Irishman, however bold, dare speak ia public the 
name of Robert Emmet, to do that name the sacred honour 
which it deserves ; here in America his last speech is to be 
found in nearly all the school-books of the common schools, 
so that the American boy may be fired into patriotism by 
the recitation of his words and the remembrance of his 
death. I will not appeal even to your pride by pointing to 
the houses you have built for the rich and fashionable, to 
the lines of railroad you have constructed, to the fields you 
have cultivated, and which fling forth their golden stores 
through these iron arteries of railroads, and these other 
arteries of canals, to sustain the army at this moment on the 
Potomac. 

"I will not appeal even to the pride of Irishmen in the 
contemplation of these great works, and ask them if the 
country shall be dishonoured where such industry has been 
expended, and such great works have been accomplished. 

"Neither shall I appeal to your. resentments, to your 
inveterate and unquenchable hatred of England. I will not 
remind you that England is with the South ; that even the 
anticipation of that disastrous affair which occurred the 
other day in Virginia was a matter of rejoicing to her ; that 
all the articles of her leading papers were such as to dis- 
parage the character, the resources, and the cause of the 
Federal Government. 

" I will not remind you that she sent here one of the first 
novelists of the day to throw brilliancy of fiction over the 
arms, and character, and resources of the South, and with 
colours equally fictitious, somewhat more lurid and dark, to 
obscure those of the North. c Oh!' I hear some of those 
idolaters of England exclaim, who up to this crisis have had 
their temple of worship in this region, for methinks between 
the Music Hall and Exeter Hall there was a railroad, not 
under ground, but over the ocean. It is a fact that after 
all her denunciations and horror of slavery, England is for 
the South, where slavery is in full blast, and against the 
North, where it has been long extinct. Who would believe 
it ? I would scarcely do so. Yet, perhaps, it would not be 
difficult for me to believe anything of England. Who would 
believe that this beneficent apostle of public morals and 
universal emancipation would have been guilty of such 
tergiversation ? Not that England is influenced by a spirit 



SPEECH AT MUSIC HALL, 



61 



of revenge ; not that she remembers what was done at 
Cambridge when George Washington took command of the 
revolutionary forces under the old tree there ; not that she 
remembers Xew Orleans, and that raw levies, which are now 
the subject of so much criticism, met the flower of her army 
and laid it low as the mower lays down the grass with his 
scythe; not that she remembers on whose side the sym- 
pathies of the American people were in the Russian war : 
not at all. In spite of Shakespeare and Bacon, England is 
no sentimentalist, no poet, and no philosopher ; the sturdy 
old fellow in mahogany tops is a practical man of business, 
a positive and absolute Gradgrind, a man for hard facts, and 
nothing else, who makes war only for considerations which 
lie deep in the bottom of his capacious pocket ; and as he 
went into India in search of diamonds, and to open a very 
extensive market for his Brumagen ware and calico prints, 
and as he bayoneted the Chinese to force opium down then* 
throats, so now he encourages, favours, and stimulates the 
South in this revolution, and threatens to force the blockade, 
because cotton is more precious to him than political princi- 
ple ; and he prefers this to his own consistency and decency, 
and the obligations of good faith and good-will which he 
owes to the nations with whom he has relations of commerce 
and diplomacy. 

" In view of all these circumstances, I shall not remind 
you that every blow dealt against the revolution at the 
South is a blow dealt against the plots and schemes of 
England. I strike a loftier strain. Paulo raojora canemus. 
"Were the Irishman an outlaw here — were he divested of all 
rights of which he is now invested — had he no home — even 
were he proscribed and victimised by some political party 
in power; still would I invoke his arm this night, and 
insist that the cause which is now calling forth all that 
is generous and chivalrous in Missouri, all that now 
awakens the eagles of the Alleghanies from their eyries, 
all that now arrays the youth and manhood of the country 
along the banks of the Potomac, is well worth fighting 
for, is well worth dying for. Look ! look to that 
flag. This day I stood on Bunker Hill, and, casting 
my eye along the stately shaft, I saw it there, with nothing 
between it and God's own sun, and I thought as those 
glorious hues reflected the favouring sunshine that there 



C2 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



burst from it memories which would kindle the dullest into 
heroism. Let no one, however practical he may be, 
however sensible or sagacious he may be, sneer at a 
nation's flag. A national flag is the most sacred thing 
that a nation can possess. Libraries, museums, exchequers, 
tombs, and statues of great men — all are inferior to it. It 
is the illuminated diploma of its authority; it is the im- 
perishable epitomization of its history. As I cast my eye 
along that shaft of granite, what did I see there ? I saw 
Cornwallis deliver up his sword. I saw the British troops 
evacuating the city of New York. I saw George Wash- 
ington inaugurated as the first President of the L^nited 
States. I saw the lofty brow and gaunt frame of Andrew 
Jackson. I saw the veterans of the Peninsular war reeling 
before the fire of Tennessee rifles in the swamps of Louisiana. 
I saw the thunders and lightnings of Lake Erie, when Perry 
commanded them to go forth and sweep the friend of the 
South and the enemy of the North from its waters. I saw 
the American sailor pursuing his desolate and heroic way up 
the interminable stream of the Amazon, disclosing a new 
world even within the New World, to the industry and 
avarice of the age. I saw, in the Bay of Smyrna, the 
hunted prey of Austria rescued beneath the Stars and 
Stripes. I saw the towers of Mexico and causeway over 
which Cortez went. I saw those towers and that causeway 
glistening in a glory greater than even Cortez brought to 
Spain. I saw the white bird floating, when the explorer 
stood upon the shore of the land which the human eye had 
never before seen mirrored. These and a throng of other 
grand incidents passed like a vision over those stars as I 
stood beneath them this day. Oh, may that flag never 
incur another disaster ! May the troops who carry it into 
action die where they receive the fatal fire, rather than yield 
one inch of the soil over which it has a right to float ! May 
the troops who carry it into action henceforth have this 
motto written upon its folds — 4 Death if you will, victory if 
God will give it to us, but no defeat and no retreat ! ' Oh, 
if this is not worth fighting for, if that flag is not worth 
fighting for, if the country which it typifies and over which 
it has a right to expand its folds, if the principles which it 
symbolizes — if these are not worth fighting for — if the 
country which Mirabeau, with his superb diction, spoke of 



SPEECH AT MUSIC HALL. 63 

glowingly even during its infancy, which De Tocqueville 
recommended with such calm wisdom and accurate philo- 
sophy to the acceptation and respect of the statesmen of the 
Old World, which Burke, with the magnificence of his mind, 
pictured in its development, even when there was but the 
' seminal principle,' as he said himself, of its magnitude upon 
the earth — if this and these are not worth fighting for — 
infinitely better worth fighting for than all the kings and 
queens, than all the Gibraltars and seraglios, than all the 
jungles and pagodas which Irishmen have fought for under 
Eiu'opean flags, then I stand in the minority. But it is not 
so. If in a minority I stand to-night, uttering these words 
and this invocation, it is in a minority of twenty millions 
against ten. This, too, I know — that every Irishman this 
side of Mason and Dixon's line is with me. If there is one 
who is not, let him take the next Galway steamer and go 
home. And, I believe this — that he will not only have his 
expenses paid, but something left in his pocket to enable 
him to praise England when he gets there. 

" Let me mention to you one incident, which may be 
taken as an indication of the sterling devotion of Irishmen, 
in this contest, to the Government of which they are so 
proud. I met an Irishman to-day who, by his steady 
habits, his quiet but persistent industry and attention to 
his duties, has been enabled to put by several thousand 
dollars, and he told me that, not only because he had faith 
in the power of the Federal Government, but because, even 
if he had not such faith, it would be his duty to support it 
when threatened, he would to-morrow buy five thousand 
dollars' worth of treasury notes. 

" And here also I will remind you, that for every Irish- 
man south of Mason and Dixon's line there are hundreds 
and thousands of Irishmen north of it. Here upon these 
northern shores does the Irish emigrant first touch the land 
of which many an evening, gazing on the descending sun, 
he has dreamed and thought it was a land of glory. Here 
it is that his rights have been restored. Here it is that the 
genius of his race has displayed itself effectively, and has 
been honourably compensated and crowned. 

" Here was the scene of Fulton's triumph, and here 
Thomas Emmet matured the honours he had gathered in 
his own land. I cannot find in my heart to disparage my 



64 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



countrymen down South ; but here we Irishmen have the 
mercantile activity, the intellectual vigour, the professional 
prowess, and here we Irishmen multitudinously preponderate. 
Never mind the foolish cant about 'Irishmen fighting 
against Irishmen.' It is not the first time they have done so. 
There is nothing at all new in that feature of the case. 
That argument has no weight at all with any reader of Irish 
history, or any one personally acquainted with Ireland. At 
Fontenoy they crossed bayonets. 

" In '98 brothers met brothers face to face and foot 
to foot. In the American Revolution, while there was one 
gallant Fitzgerald riding side by side with Washington, 
there was another charging against him, and that was Lord 
Edward. The thing to be ascertained is, the right cause. 
That ascertained, stand by it ; fight for it, though your 
brother strike against you ; die for it, though one half of 
your people curse you, while the rest accord to your memo- 
ries their tears and grateful benedictions. We have the 
right, for we have the Constitution, which has come down 
to us unimpaired from the day it was first formed. We 
have the flag under which this country has made such mar- 
vellous progress and won such achievements. We have all 
that constitute national guarantees, national honour, and 
national history. Then up, Irishmen ! up! Take the sword 
.in hand ! Down to the banks of the Potomac ! Let those 
who can, do so ; and I believe I speak consistently with the 
views of your esteemed Chief Magistrate, when I say that 
every facility will be accorded those Irishmen who wish to 
enlist under the banner of the State ; and I have no doubt 
that, somehow or other — indeed with every facility — the 
Irishmen regimented together, carrying the green flag with 
the Stars and Stripes and the State arms, will one day find 
themselves in the Irish Brigade under the command of 
General James Shields. 

" An Irishman never fights so well — it is a prejudice, 
and if not a laudable one, it is, at all events, pardonable — 
an Irishman never fights so well as when he has an Irish- 
man for his comrade. An Irishman going into the field in 
such a cause as this — in any field, in any cause — has this as 
his strongest impulse, has this as his choicest consolation, 
has this as his richest reward in anticipation — that his con- 
duct, if it be exemplary and courageous, will reflect honour 



SPEECH AT MUSIC BALL. 



05 



upon that land which he will see no more. He therefore 
wishes that, should he fall, it may be into the arms of one 
of his own faith and blood, so that kindred lips may convey 
to his family and relatives, and to all who care to hear of 
him, and how he behaved on the fatal clay, that he died in 
a way worthy, not only of the cause in which he fell, but of 
the country that gave him birth. 

" This is the explanation why Irishmen desire, earnestly 
and passionately desire, to be together in the fight for the 
Stars and Stripes ; and I am sure that there is not a native- 
born citizen here, with doctrines however adverse to this in- 
dividualizing of nationalities, in the great mass of American 
citizens, who will not confess that it is a natural, a beauti- 
ful, a generous, and a useful prejudice. 

" The only apprehension which gives me any anxiety is, 
that the Irish Brigade may arrive even later than did their 
prototype at Fontenoy. They were the last to come up 
then, but they did the business. I am afraid that the busi- 
ness will be over upon the Potomac before our Irish Brigade 
arrives. I trust not — I trust that we shall, at ail events, 
participate in the dangers as well as in the honours of that 
conclusive victory. 

" It will indeed be a victory worthy of record, not merely 
by such historians as Prescott, who wrote with so luminous 
a pen upon the imperishable page, but (if it be not profane 
to say so) it will be a victory worthy to be recorded on the 
pages of the Book of Life itself. 

et The picture unfolds itself to me. The returning army 
with that banner ; — the woodsman from Maine, the rafts- 
man from the Upper Mississippi ; the farmer and mechanic 
from New England ; — all of them in their tattered uniforms, 
and with their riddled flags ; — and amidst that crowd, the 
Green Flag of Ireland, the laughing voices, the kindling 
eyes, the hearty nature of those whose vitality is never 
greater, whose intellect is never more vivid than when dan- 
ger threatens. Oh, may this picture, roughly and imper- 
fectly sketched, be realized ; and in the presence and high 
above the remnants of this victorious army, bearing with 
them the Ark of the American covenant, may the National 
Capital expand its grand and graceful proportions, its dome 
perfected, the great image of Liberty standing more erect, 
and stately, and august, and adorned than ever ; and high 

E 



Gi3 



THOMAS FBANCIS MEAGHER. 



above it, announcing victory over the wide world, and 
an auspicious omen that there shall be victories from hence- 
forth of no less consequence to the United States, the sym- 
bolic Eagle of the Republic, soaring upward and upward to 
the sun." 

General Meagher had repeatedly expressed to the author 
an earnest desire that the above address should be preserved 
in a more permanent form than the columns of the news- 
papers of the day. By printing it in these pages, therefore, 
I have but carried out the wishes of the departed in a 
matter concerning which he felt very deeply. 

From Boston Meagher proceeded to Philadelphia, where 
he set on foot two more regiments, one of infantry, the 
other of cavalry. Owing to circumstances beyond the 
control of Gen. Meagher, and to the fact that the Irish 
Brigade had gone through the entire of the Peninsular 
campaign before these regiments were prepared to take the 
field, neither of them ever joined the Brigade for which they 
were intended. 

Meantime the New York regiments went into camp at 
Fort Schuyler, on the East River. At this picturesque 
point they passed several weeks amid all the glories of a 
splendid Fall season, and here Meagher was in his glory. 
The scenes at the Fort were varied, — full of the life-bustle 
and activity attendant upon a new military organization. 
The Sundays were especially brilliant, when the friends of 
the soldiers came in hundreds from the city to visit them, 
and witness the dress-parades which usually took place on 
those days. The old grey walls of the Fort gleamed in 
the brightness of the sunshine ; — the glacis crowded with 
anxious and proud faces ; broad-breasted, firm-set, bright- 
eyed soldiers drawn up in line outside the Fort ; the blue 
waters sparkling in the unbroken sunlight of an Indian 
summer ; — the little revenue cutter reposing upon the un- 
ruffled river just below the Fort ; — white sails of pleasure 
boats flashing along ; — the green shores of Willett's Point 
opposite, with the white houses and spires peeping up from 
the many tinted foliage; — the inspiriting music of Dods- 
worth's band, which discoursed most eloquently from within 
the Fort ; — the happy groups of visitors who wandered to 
and fro in search of some beloved friend or relative ; — all 
these combined to make a picture of the last Sunday of the 



AT FA IB OAKS. 



67 



Sixty-Ninth at Fort Schuyler, which the memory of those 
who witnessed it will not soon part with. While the 
Brigade had its rendezvous at Fort Schuyler, Meagher 
constantly visited it, when his labours at the recruiting 
office permitted. He would devote his time during his 
sojourn to supervising the discipline of the men. He would 
speak bright and hopeful words to them of the cause in 
which they had enlisted; point to the glorious flag that 
floated from the ramparts, and tell them in the eloquent 
language he knew so well how to employ, that they must 
sustain it in the right with manly arms and stout hearts, and 
bring it out of the storm of battle without spot or stain of 
dishonour. How thoroughly they imbibed his inspiration, 
and how faithfully they obeyed his behests, the record of 
many a terrible field attests. From Fair Oaks to Chancellors- 
ville, when the Irish Brigade almost lost its identity, with 
its gallant commander, the Stars and Stripes and the green 
flag were borne in every fight, and came out riddled with 
shot ; torn with shells ; ripped oftentimes into shreds ; but 
they came out unsullied. During the entire fiery ordeal to 
which Meagher's Brigade was subjected, not a single Green 
Flag fell into the hands of the enemy. 

Above the busy crowd, while the lines were forming, 
Gen. Meagher stood many a Sunday upon the ramparts, 
surrounded by a host of friends, with his beautiful and 
gifted wife beside him — nee Miss Elizabeth Townsend, to 
whom he was married Nov. 14th, 1855, who loved the 
Brigade no less than the Brigade loved and honoured her. 
Such were the scenes presented at Fort Schuyler before the 
Brigade broke camp, and hastened to participate in the deadly 
strife in which they afterwards played such a gallant part. It 
is proper to mention here, that the organization of the Irish 
Brigade was in a great measure facilitated by the cordial 
assistance rendered by several gentlemen of known worth 
and patriotism; foremost amongst them the late Daniel 
Devlin and Judge Charles P. Daly. To their earnest co- 
operation the Brigade was largely indebted, in conjunction 
with the indefatigable labours of Gen. Meagher, for the 
efficient services it was enabled to render in the field. 



68 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE GENERAL AT THE HEAD OF HIS BEIGADE— APPOINT- 
MENT BY PRESIDENT LINCOLN, AND CONFIRMATION 
BY THE SENATE — THE FIRST BATTLE. 

On the 18th of November, 1861, Meagher left for Washing- 
ton with the first regiment of the Brigade. The others soon 
followed. A splendid set of colours were presented to each 
regiment at the residence of Archbishop Hughes, on Madi- 
son Avenue, prior to their departure. Meagher in his most 
eloquent style made answer for his command that the men 
would do their duty faithfully. He made no hasty pledges. 

The colours received on that day, with the motto u No 
Ketreat," were returned unsullied, though torn and battle- 
stained. The motto inscribed upon them received a magni- 
ficent verification ; for, in the fiercest conflicts, and through 
all peril and suffering, the men who fought under them 
never turned their backs upon the enemy. Even throughout 
the harassing campaign of the Peninsula they formed the 
rear-guard of the Army of the Potomac, protecting it from 
the repeated assaults of the foe. To them at least each day 
brought victory, but " no retreat ! " 

It is not out of place to state that General Meagher did 
not raise the Irish Brigade with the view to command it. 
All along he wished, and, so far as he was concerned, 
intended that General Shields should take command. 
Meagher was not only willing but determined to occupy no 
other position than that of Aide on General Shield's staff. 
Shields was at this time in California. He was written to 
to come on to Washington. But he had left California for 
Mexico, and the Brigade was ready to take the field without 
his having been heard from. Under these circumstances, 
Meagher yielded to the earnest solicitations of the officers 
of the Brigade, and consented to accept the command of it, 
should the Brigadier- General's rank be conferred upon him 
by the President, as it subsequently was on the 3rd of Febru- 
ary, and confirmed by the Senate during the same month. 
Proud of his military success, at this moment, and enjoying 
exuberant anticipations of the career before him, he wrote 
the following letter to the author : — 



LETTER OF CONGRATULATION. 



69 



"Headquarters Irish Brigade, 
"Sumner's Division, Camp California, 
"Feb. 21, 18G2. 

" My Dear Lyons : 

" Of all the congratulatory letters which I have received 
since my confirmation by the Senate, not one was more wel- 
come than yours. Coming from a true friend of mine, and 
an earnest friend of Ireland, I accept cordially your happy 
salutations for myself and my Irish Brigade. Our actions 
in the future will not, I feel confident, disappoint the 
brightest expectations of our friends, of whom we count you 
one of the worthiest and most estimable. 

" Very sincerely, your friend, 

" Thomas Francis Meagher, 

"Brigadier-General IT. S. V. 
" Commanding the Irish Brigade, 
"Army of the Potomac." 

To follow the fortunes of the Irish Brigade is no part of 
my task, except in so far as the subject of this biography, 
in his character as a soldier, becomes individually conspicuous 
in the many varied chapters which comprise its history. 
Meagher was, of course, the living presence of the Brigade 
all through its career, from its first encampment in the 
brushwood at Camp California, to the fatal battle of Chan- 
cellorsville, where, like a dissolving vision, it melted away 
into the shadow of death. The Brigade, upon its arrival in 
Virginia, was soon ordered, with its division, to Warrenton 
Junction. This movement afforded Meagher an acceptable 
opportunity for indulging in a description, in his peculiar, 
light-hearted, graphic manner, full of humour, but not by 
any means devoid of pathos. 4i When we arrived at War- 
renton Junction," says Meagher, " orders were given to 
encamp, and in five minutes the orders were carried out. 
All we had to do was to stack arms, and throw ourselves 
down in the mud. Let me tell you what kind of a camp we 
had. There were no tents, and this spared us the trouble to 
pitch them. Our camping- ground was in a deep wood of 
very tall, dark, bare pines. The sharp winds of the winter 
had stripped them of their leaves, and shivering and 
groaning in their nakedness, they stood up there like 
the frozen skeletons of so many Noah Claypoles that had 



70 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



been shaved, and whipped, and starved to death. All day, 
through their wide open net-work of leafless branches, you 
saw the watery clouds sweep by in the leaden sky. All 
night, through the same sort of gridiron overhead, you saw 
the pale stars trembling in the darkness ; and now and then 
you caught a glimpse of the sickly moon, as she thrust her 
face through her curtains, and then, as if disgusted with the 
prospect, suddenly drew it back again. The red and yellow 
leaves lay thick upon the ground. Were it dry underneath, 
they would have made a delightful bed. As it was, they 
not only covered, but were saturated with, the mud which 
welcomed us, not to our gory beds, but to rheumatic sheets. 
It was five inches only better than a confirmed swamp we 
were ordered to encamp in. There was little or no grum- 
bling about it, however. Indeed, it gave rise to more jokes 
than moans. Picking your way through the poor fellows 
as they lay there on the broad of their backs in their 
blankets, with their toes to the sky and their knapsacks 
and coffee-kettles under their heads, you'd hear one of them 
say — 

" 4 Sure, Peter, we might as well be in a bog.' 
u And then another — 

" 6 Och, then, begorra, they might as well have drowned 
us at once.' 

" Whilst a third would ejaculate — 

" 6 Well, one consolation, we'll all be in the hospital to- 
morrow, and anyhow that's a thrifle better than this.' 

" The -officers were just as pleasantly situated as the 
men — though some of them contrived to improve on the 
mud and the leaves. One of them knocked a cracker-box 
asunder, and laying the nice smooth even-edged pieces 
together, so as to form a stretcher, had something else than 
his blanket and braided blue over-coat between him and the 
morass. Another of them — a gentleman of the most in- 
genious turn of mind and wonderful research — quietly 
slipped the cushions out of an ambulance, to the dismay of 
a most benevolent surgeon who came a little too late to 
look them up for himself. 

" General French had his head in a hen-coop. General 
Richardson had his between the protruding roots, well up 
against the shelving trunk, of a very big tree. As for my 
headquarters — nothing under the circumstances could have 



IN CAMP. 



11 



been finer. Half-a-dozen pioneers from one of the regi- 
ments cut a couple dozen of strong tough stakes, eight or 
ten feet long, and planting them firmly in the bog in the 
form of a circle, the diameter of which was fully twelve 
feet, interlaced them closely and tightly with a quantity of 
branches or twigs, which, when the enclosure was complete, 
gave the structure the appearance of a kish or basket of 
noble dimensions. Being tasteful as well as useful, how- 
ever, the pioneers were not content to leave the walls of the 
stockade in all the cold simplicity of wicker-work. So they 
hunted about the wood, and finding a lot of dark green 
bushes of some kind or other, interweaved them with the 
wicker-work, and thus gave the edifice a warm and summer- 
like appearance. Although they were Irishmen, the archi- 
tects didn't forget to leave a door-way. It was a beautiful 
door-way — arched and ample — the arch being decorated 
with a sheep's skull and horns — a relic of the more peaceful 
and plenteous times of old Virginia. Yet the most important 
part was now to be done. The flooring had to be laid. 
One can't hang himself up as he does his coat on a wall, 
and go to sleep in a dry quilt, however warm and summer- 
like the wall may be. 'T would be infinitely better to pull 
the wall down and fall to sleep on it flat, than have it 
standing up there walling in mud. A little way off from 
the camp was a barn, and in this barn was a short ladder 
and a loose door — that is, a door that wasn't on hinges and 
looked as though it was going astray, The poor pioneers 
thought it no harm to borrow the ladder and door, without 
letting any one know of it. So what with the short ladder, 
the loose door, and three bags of oats, the sleeping arrange- 
ments of the headquarters of the Irish Brigade were as dry 
as a rock. Fortunately they were on such a scale as to 
enable the lessee to accommodate over a dozen. It would 
have done the heart of the Sanitary Commission good to 
have seen that dozen and over laid out for the night, and 
answering in their deep slumbers the music of the mules, 
and any astronomical observations they might choose to 
make. There they lay without slats or stitch between them 
— on the ladder, on the door, on the bags of oats — ranged 
all round the beautiful rotunda — forming a vocal surbase to 
it — with their saddle-bags serving as bolsters, and a crack- 
ling, red-hot, huge, kitchen-like fire shooting up its sparks 



12 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



and sending forth its incense in the centre of the temple. 
The temple was the admiration, the wonder, the envy of 
surrounding quarters. General Richardson thought it alto- 
gether too good for the times. General French, burniDg 
with poetic ecstasy, declared it was a Druid's grove. One 
of the regimental commissaries said it was just the place 
for his hard-tack and vinegar ; whilst a demure hospital- 
steward, putting in his head and sweeping the circle with 
his spectacles, exclaimed — c Oh ! what a nice place that 
would be for my plasters and bottles ! ' " 

The first battle in which the Irish Brigade was engaged 
was at Fair Oaks, fought on June 1st, 1862. The battle 
of Seven Pines had been raging, close by, all the previous 
day, and here Meagher's best effort as a military historian 
was displayed. The Brigade, then stationed half a day's 
march from the battle-field, was indulging in steeple-chases, 
and other camp jovialities in true Irish fashion, while Gen. 
Casey was fighting the confederate forces under Longstreet, 
Hill, Huger, and Smith, on the Williamsburg road. Xext 
morning the fight was renewed at Fair Oaks, and the part 
played by his command is thus described by Gen. Meagher. 
Alluding to the festivities in camp, the General writes — 

" In the midst of the preparations for this performance, 
the order came for the Brigade to fall in. In half an hour 
the Brigade was on the march. It was a cold and gloomy 
afternoon. The tremendous rain of the previous night had 
flooded the low grounds on both sides of the Chickahominy, 
whilst it had swollen the river to such a volume that only 
one bridge was found available for the passage of the 
troops. French's brigade, which marched on a line parallel 
to ours, was compelled to wade, up to the middle, through 
the widespread waters, and the deep mud over which they 
swept. After a little it was found impossible to bring the 
artillery along. 

" Close on twelve o'clock, the head of the column reach- 
ed the field where Sedgwick's Division, rapidly coming up 
an hour or so before sundown, had met and checked 
the enemy. The night was the blackest night ever known. 
Not a star was visible. One vast cloud filled the sky, pro- 
ducing so dense a darkness you would have thought it was 
through a coal-pit, in the bowels of the earth, that we were 
inarching. Here and there, however, you could catch the 



SCENES ON THE BATTLE-FIELD. 



73 



yellow glimmering — or at times the broad and sudden flashes 
— of the lanterns of the surgeons, as they groped and 
stumbled over the field in search of the wounded. 
The saddest moans were heard on every side. A 
dull, heavy, woeful murmur deepened the tramp of 
the regiments passing on through the darkness, over 
the slain and dying. Now and then, a shot 
from the pickets struck the ear ; and this was sometimes 
quickly followed by a burst of musketry in the woods to the 
right and front. Had the sky been clear — had the stars and 
moon been glistening over it — the scene, perhaps, might 
have been dismaying. As it was, the horrors of the battle- 
field were buried in the depths of that impenetrable night, 
and the wearied men of the Brigade lay down to rest, upon 
the drenched and torn ground, in the midst of the havoc of 
the day, hardly conscious of the ghastly companions who 
slept among them, bathed in blood. 

u But the dawn revealed it all. Here was a Georgian — 
a tall, stout-limbed, broad- shouldered fellow — lying on his 
face ; his head half -buried in the mud ; his long thick brown 
hair soaked and matted with the rain and mire ; his long 
white fingers grasping a broken musket ; his canteen and 
drab felt-hat flung a few feet from him ; his haversack, with 
two or three biscuits breaking through it, tossed over his 
back ; and a coarse hempen shirt, all clotted and starched 
with blood, sticking out from under his empty cartridge-box 
and grey jacket. Not far from him was a dead horse ; his 
distended eyeballs- glaring in the pale light; and a thick 
crust of blood and foam edging the open mouth that had 
grown stiff in the last writhings of the poor brute's agony. 
Nearer to us, close to a burned stump, lay one of our own 
artillerymen ; his bold handsome face black with sweat and 
the smoke of battle ; his right leg torn off by a shell above 
the knee; his black hair flattened back and streaming from 
his forehead, as though he had been shipwrecked and washed 
ashore ; his brass-hilted short sword bent under him ; and 
as he lay there upturned, cold and rigid as though he were 
made of stone, he seemed to be gazing, with the wild, 
fixed look of an idiot, at the clouds floating through the 
watery sky. 

" The root of a withered and whitened oak was the 
Headquarters of the Irish Brigade this morning. Behind 



74 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



this root was a pile of muskets ; some with bayonets fixed ; 
others without lock or bayonet; many of them bent and 
twisted ; two or three of them coiled into hoops, as though 
they were pliable as leaden water-pipes ; all more or less 
befouled and damaged. Blankets, too, were strewn every- 
where around. Knapsacks — some of them torn open — 
others as tidily packed as they would be on an inspection — 
lay all about. Further down the field, within a few hundred 
paces of the railroad, a gun-carriage was upset, and had 
the muzzle of its rifled piece sunk into a patch of black 
swamp, thickly set with short green grass. To the rear of 
the Headquarters — a musket shotfrom it — was an ambulance 
with one wheel only, and a blood-smeared stretcher slipping 
out of it behind, underneath the tarpaulin curtain. 

u I was quietly and mournfully noticing these and a 
hundred other evidences of the battle of the previous day — . 
was, by the by, talking to a young Irishman from South 
Carolina, whom I found propped up against a mouldy old 
tree, disabled by a musket-shot in the side, and manfully 
suppressing the expression of his pain — when there broke 
from the lofty deep woods in our front a deafening volley. 
Again and again was it repeated. Then there was a like 
volley from the woods on our right — then from the woods 
on the left — and then a volley from the entire front, sharp 
and crackling as a thunder-crash in the sudden outburst of 
a thunderstorm, but far more prolonged. 

" Waking up from the profound silence and darkness of 
the night, to their utter astonishment the enemy found us 
within pistol-range of them ; nor were we less astonished 
at finding them, without any intimation or warning what- 
ever, so close at hand. 

" The Pamunkey and Richmond railroad ran within five 
hundred paces of the Brigade line, and almost parallel to it. 
Two miles to our rear was the Chickahominy. Richardson's 
division, of which mine was the 2nd Brigade, occupied in 
two fines a wide cornfield, the crop on which had been 
thoroughly trampled out of sight, nothing in the way of 
vegetation remaining above the soaked and trodden surface 
but the blackened stumps of the pines that formerly covered 
it. To the right were tall, beautiful, noble woods : to the 
extreme left, the same. Between the left of our line and 
the railroad was a smaller wood. On the other side of the 



FAIR OAKS. 



To 



railroad was a long thick belt of handsome trees — robust, 
straight, towering trees — full of glittering and rustling 
leaves — the beams of the dawning sun veiling them with 
transparent gold — not a breath of wind wakening them from 
their grand repose. This superb belt, however, concealed 
an ugly swamp, and the perplexing and almost impervious 
undergrowth with which it was interwoven. Richmond was 
but four miles distant from the colours of the Sixty-Ninth 
New York Volunteers, the right of the Brigade. One of the 
pioneers of the regiment — formerly a sailor — an immense, 
shaggy, iron-built fellow, with a tanned skin and a tem- 
pestuous eye, agile and daring as a tiger — darting up a 
towering pine close to the railroad, saw the dome of the 
Capitol flashing through the smoke of the city, the church - 
spues, and shining fragments of the bridges over the James 
river. 

u The object of the enemy was to drive us from the 
railroad back to the Chickahominy, and into it if possible. 
They had surprised General Casey, the day before, on the 
other side of the railroad, and had nearly cut his Division to 
pieces. Sedgwick, however, coming up rapidly on the 
right, and Kearney on the left, the enemy were promptly 
checked, and fell back for the night. At daybreak he 
resumed the attack. 

" A. few minutes after the volley I have mentioned, 
Howard's Brigade had crossed the railroad and were blazing 
away at a Brigade of Georgians in that magnificent forest 
in front of us, forcing and tearing their way through the 
under-brush, through the swamp, over fallen trees and 
mangled bodies, in the full blaze of a blinding fire. French's 
Brigade followed. Our turn came next. 

" The Sixty-Ninth swept down to the railroad, and 
reaching it, deployed into hue of battle on the track. This 
they did under a hurricane of bullets. Once in line, how- 
ever, they paid back the compliments of the morning with 
the characteristic alacrity and heartiness of a genuine Irish 
acknowledgment. The exchange of fervent salutations was 
kept up for an hour. The chivalry of Virginia met its match 
in the chivalry of Tipperary. 

" In the mean time, the Eighty-Eighth New York, pierc- 
ing the small wood which, as I have said, lay between the 
railroad and the left of the Brigade, debouched from it into 



76 



THOMAS F BAN CIS MEAGHER. 



a pretty deep cutting of the road, in which the regiment 
threw itself into line of battle, as the Sixty-Ninth had done 
a little higher up, and got to work with a dazzling celerity. 
In front of the cutting was an open space, some ten or 
twelve acres in extent, forming a half-circle. A rail-fence 
ran across it a hundred paces from the railroad. Here and 
there, behind the fence, were clumps of shrubbery and wild 
blackberry bushes. The whole was girt by a cincture of 
dark pines, closely set together, in the limbs of which, 
hidden by the leaves and shadows of the trees, were swarms 
of sharp-shooters ; whilst the wood itself, and the clumps 
and bushes, were alive with Rebels. Climbing the embank- 
ment of the cutting, so as to enable them to rest their 
muskets and plant their colours on top of it, the Eighty- 
Eighth threw their first fire in one broad sheet of lightning 
into the fence and wood. From both fence and wood came, 
an instant after, a scorching whirlwind, tearing and plough- 
ing up the grass and cornstalks in the open space, and 
ripping the colours, as it made them flap and beat against 
the flag-staffs. 

u Close to where the colours were planted stood a log- 
built cottage — the property of a lethargic German with 
pink eyes and yellow hair — and two or three auxiliary 
structures devoted to pigs, chickens, and bees. These 
served as an excellent cover for a company of the Eighty- 
Eighth, detailed for special practice against the sharp- 
shooters. 

" On the opposite embankment there stood a very dingy 
and battered little barn, abounding in fleas and mice, and 
superabundantly carpetted with damp hay. This was 
appropriated as the hospital of the regiment. The red flag 
was displayed from the roof, and in a few minutes it was 
the scene of much suffering, tenderness, devotion, thought 
and love of home, heroic resignation, and calm bravery 
under the inexorable hand of death. There, indeed, 
were to be seen in many instances the sweetness, 
the cheerfulness, the strength, the grandeur of character 
which proved the fidelity of the private soldier to his 
cause, the disinterestedness with which he had pledged 
himself to it, the consciousness of his having done well 
in the face of danger, and leaving to his home and comrades 
a memory which would brighten the sadness of those who 



FAIR OAKS. 



77 



knew, loved, and honoured him. There was to be seen the 
good, kind, gentle priest of the old and eternal Faith, 
calming the fevered brain with words which at such moments 
express the divinest melody, and gladdening the drooping 
eye with visions that transform the bed of torture into one 
of flowers, and the cloud of death into a home of splendour. 

" Driven back on the right by Sedgwick — on the centre 
by Eichardson — on the left by Kearney — baffled, broken, 
routed at all three points at the one and the same time — at 
noon that day the Eebel forces were pursued by Hooker. Had 
he been permitted, he would have followed them into Rich-' 
moncl. Kearney was mad for the pursuit — so was Sumner 
— so were French and Sedgwick — so was every one of our 
officers and soldiers. It was the instinct and passion of the 
entire army. 

4i ' Now that we've got them on the run' — as a Sergeant 
of the Eighty-Eighth knowingly observed — ; the thing is to 
keep them running.' 

" It would have been the telling game to play. Followed 
up briskly and with the determination to win, the enemy 
would not have faced about this side of Eichmond. As it 
was, his retreat could hardly have been more fearfully dis- 
ordered. Thousands of muskets were flung away — 
cartridge-boxes, blankets, everything that ever so slightly 
checked or slackened the rapidity of thatyvild flight — for it 
was nothing short of that — were torn off, dropped on the 
road, or whirled impatiently into the woods. General Joe 
Johnston, who commanded the Eebel forces, had been 
previously wounded, but the fact was concealed from his 
men. But the impression that he was still at their head had 
no effect. The fragments of his army hurled themselves, 
through the choking dust and blistering sun of that tumul- 
tuous hour, into the streets of the Confederate capital : and 
it was not until they were well assured that the Federals 
had stacked arms, instead of keeping the bayonet to their 
heels, that they drew breath and bridle, and came to their 
wits again. All this I have had from a gentleman — a South 
Carolinian by birth— who was in Eichmond at the time; and 
witnessing the thorough disorder and dismay of the Eebel 
forces, was utterly astonished at not finding the Federal 
columns in hot pursuit. 

" Followed up with impetuosity that day, the Army of 



78 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



Northern Virginia would have received a staggering blow, 
the city of Richmond was ours, General McOlellan would 
have inaugurated a reign of victory with an achievement of 
incomparable advantage. Never shall I forget the fierceness 
with which General Kearney used to condemn and curse this 
blunder — never forget how that quick, stormy, imperious 
eye of his used to flash its lightnings, then cloud up and 
darken, and then flash out again with a more scathing fire — 
never forget how that proud frame of his used to swell with 
vehement vexation, with a furious impatience, with a savage 
resentment almost— as he spoke of the opportunity that was 
so heedlessly and blindly lost, and cast to the idle winds that 
day. A splendid soldier, full of animation, full of electricity, 
full of daring, he could not brook the caution which satisfied 
itself with half a victory, and inflamed with faith in the 
power of enthusiasm and rapid action, chafed and beat the 
air with anger when a tamer policy prevailed. 

" As it was, however, the result of the battle of Fair 
Oaks enabled General McClellan to establish the left wing of 
his array behind intrenched works within four miles of 
Richmond. The right wing, under General Fitz- John Por- 
ter, extended the other side of the Chickahominy. Had 
General McDowell effected a junction with Porter, the 
Federal lines would have proved impenetrable, and the 
capture of Richmond would have inevitably closed the 
campaign of the Peninsula. 

" The three weeks we spent behind those intrenched 
works, were busy weeks. In the woods, fronting and 
flanking us on the right, the pickets were unremittingly 
engaged. At tattoo and reveille the enemy's drums were 
punctually heard, beating as loudly and spiritedly as our 
own. There were frequent alarms. During the night, the 
crackling of firearms was incessant. At times — generally 
in the afternoon — a sudden dash of the enemy in considera- 
ble force, would throw our pickets back upon then reserves, 
and the reserves back upon the breast- works into the 
hideous abattis in front of them — a distorted mass and 
'monstrous net-work of tangled trees that had been levelled 
and flung into the most bothering confusion by the western 
axemen of Richardson's Division. 

a One way or other, there was excitement enough to 
counteract in a great measure the vitiated atmosphere and 



FAIR OAKS. 



79 



water of the vile swamp in which we lay intrenched. The 
camp itself, in those calm beautiful days of June, was ever 
and always a brilliant picture — full of life — abounding in a 
variety of incidents, points of interest, and all the striking- 
colouring and grouping of a military drama on the largest 
scale. 

" There, on every side and close to us, were those fatal 
woods, which seemed to follow us wherever we went, and hem 
us in wherever we pitched our tents. Here were the breast- 
works — in some places built of huge logs — for the most 
part of red earth — stretching in zigzag lines, from the 
railroad over towards the river, with a deep ditch out- 
side them. Between the breast-works and the woods, 
the abattis, just mentioned, covered the intervening ground 
with a wreck of splintered trunks and broken limbs, and a 
torturing web and trap of stumps and branches, as imper- 
vious and inextricable as an Indian jungle. Here again, at 
salient angles of those zigzag lines, were batteries of brass 
Napoleons and brown Parrots in position, with their ammu- 
nition stored in bomb-proof magazines, and the artillerymen 
grouped about them. Within the lines, and all over a vast 
area, were the long white streets of the camp, glistening in 
the blue sunshine. Close to an interval of log-built breast- 
work were the tents of the Sixty-Ninth Pennsylvania — a 
stubborn Irish regiment, with its heart as big as its muscle 
— proud as a true chief of some old Celtic clan could be of 
the Green Flag it carried, and sworn that foe, as well as 
friend, should have to speak of it as the symbol of a gallant 
race and do it honour. Next to them was a solid German 
regiment, the Seventh New York, with the gorgeous tri- 
colour of the Rhine riving at the Colonel's quarters — the band 
rilling the dreamy air with the liveliest eloquence of war — 
the soldiers themselves filling it with the pungent incense of 
then brier-wood pipes and meerschaums, or with the savoury 
fumes which curled upwards from the bubbling frying-pan 
and kettle, sweetening the miasma of the swamp with the 
fragrance of pork and onions. As one glanced at the colours 
displayed at the headquarters of the different regiments, 
and recognized in their splendid blazonry the mottoes and 
insignia of the several States they represented, as well as 
the mottoes and insignia of the various nationalities that 
diversified the character of the national army, he could not 



80 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



but call to mind the noble lines in which John Savage 
describes the glorious uprising of the North in vindication 
of the national authority." 

So much for Meagher's powers as a military historian, 
but the opinion which he states as having been shared 
equally with himself, by General Kearney, and others, that 
a rapid pursuit of the Confederates into Eichmond, after the 
battle of Fair Oaks, could have been successfully and easily 
accomplished, was not entertained by General McClellan; 
for he says, in his report, after describing the swollen con- 
dition of the river, and the destruction of the bridges — " The 
only available means therefore of uniting our forces at Fair 
Oaks, for an advance on Eichmond soon after the battle, 
was to march the troops from Mechanics ville and other 
points on the left banks of the Chickahominy down to 
Bottom's Bridge, and thence over the Williamsburg road to 
the position near Fair Oaks, a distance of about 23 miles. 
In the condition of the roads at that time this march could 
not have been made with artillery in less than two days, by 
which time the enemy would have been secure within his 
intrenchments around Eichmond. In short, the idea of 
uniting the two wings of the army in time to make a vigorous 
pursuit of the enemy with the prospect of overtaking him 
before he reached Eichmond, only five miles distant from 
the field of battle, is simply absurd, and was, I presume, 
never seriously entertained by any one connected with the 
Army of the Potomac. An advance, involving the separa- 
tion of the two wings by the impassable Chickahominy, 
would have exposed each to defeat in detail. Therefore I 
held the position already gained, and completed our crossings 
as rapidly as possible." 

After the battle of Fair Oaks, General Meagher had the 
gratification to receive the compliments of General McClellan, 
and of the now famous Spanish leader, General Prim, upon 
the valour of his troops. It is told that when riding up the 
railroad with General Heitzelman, General Prim passed by 
the Sixty- Third and Eighty-Eighth regiments drawn up in 
line. General Meagher, with some of the members of his 
staff, were in front of the regiments. Struck with the stal- 
wart and muscular appearance of the men, as well as with 
their military bearing, the old Castilian inquired through his 
aid-de-camp interpreter, "What troops are these?" The 



BATTLE OF MECHANICS VILLE. 



81 



General replied. "A portion of the Irish Brigade." The 
Marshal's eye brightened, his olive complexion could not 
hide the pride of the soldier at sight of such fighting- 
material. In a dignified manner, characteristic of his race 
and nation, he complimented the Brigade and its commander, 
who replied that i4 Spain had reason to appreciate Irish 
valour ; that Spain and Ireland were old friends from 
ancient times, and their soldiers had often stood side by 
side together on many a hard-fought field." The generals, 
accompanied by their brilliant staffs and escort of cavalry, 
galloped off amid the thundering cheers of the Eighty-Eighth. 
In a conversation at the Headquarters of the Army, after 
visiting the troops. General Prim said: — "j don't wonder that 
the Irish fight so well: their cheers are as good as the bullets 
of other men. 5; General McClellan, accompanied by his staff, 
visited the Corps of General Sumner. On coming to the 
Brigade, he was met by General Meagher and staff at the 
right of the line. On reaching the left, after using the most 
complimentary terms in reference to the men, he especially 
charged General Meagher to return, and thank the regiments 
for their gallant and steady conduct in the action of the 1st 
of June at Eair Oaks. The General conveyed the message 
to the Brigade, adding that General McClellan also desired 
him to say that when he called upon them again, which he 
would do in case of need, he had the fullest confidence that 
they would emulate the brave efforts of that day. The 
trust thus so confidingly reposed in the men of the Irish 
Brigade was never violated. The approbation which they 
won from the Commander-in-chief in the first battle-field in 
which they •• fleshed their maiden swords." was also gallantly 
earned in all the desperate conflicts which succeeded it. 

The trying horns for Meagher and his Brigade approached 
when the famous retreat of the Army of the Potomac from 
the Peninsula was decided upon; for, as will be noticed, 
they had to bear much of the fighting from White House 
to Malvern Hill, in the battles whereof I have now to 
speak. 

The Battle of Mechanicsville had been fought on Thurs- 
day, the 26th of June, between 60,000 Confederate troops, 
under General Pi. E. Lee, supported by Generals Stonewall 
Jackson, Long-street A. P. Hill, and Gustavus W. Smith, 
and a force of 35,000 men of the national army under 

F 



82 



THOMAS FBAXCIS MEAGHER. 



Fitz-Jolm Porter and General McCall, who held positions at 
Beaver Darn and Mechanicsville. The conflict began in the 
afternoon and only ended at nine at night, leaving the 
Confederate troops in position. Both sides were exhausted, 
and slept that night upon then arms. This was the first of 
the celebrated Seven clays' battles. After this, commenced 
the retreat from White House on the Paniunkey. at that 
time the base of General McClellan's army, to Harrison's 
Landing on the James River. In this well-conducted 
movement — which will ever redound to the credit of all who 
shared in the heroism, the patience, and the sufferings of 
the retreating army — the Irish Brigade participated from 
first to last. 

The abandonment of White House, and the destruction 
of all the stores that could not be removed, immediately 
took place. Gen. Stoneman with his cavalry and flying 
artillery, which had just been called from his position, at 
Hanover Court House, when the retreat was determined on, 
was ordered to burn all the depots of stores between the 
Pamunkey and the Chickahominy, which he executed with 
great vigour, much to the chagrin of the enemy. Colonel 
Ingalls, the quarter-master, sent nearly all the stores to 
Savage's Station. On Friday morning, the 27th, General 
McCall fell back on the bridges crossing the Chickahominy, 
where he was ordered to make a stand against the approach- 
ing enemy, while the main body of the army was commencing 
the retreat. The force consisted of 30,000 troops under 
Generals Fitz-Johu Porter, Morrell, Sykes, Martindale, 
Butterfield, and Griffin. The artillery consisted of sixty 
pieces of cannon, which were posted on the heights sur- 
rounding the position which occupied a line of battle 
extending two miles from the Chickahominy to Coal Harbour, 
Fitz-John Porter commanding the whole force. General 
Reynolds, with his reserves, held the right; at Coal 
Harbour and in the rear were the troops of General Seymour 
and General Cook. In the neighbourhood of the fight 
stood Gaines' Mill, from which this bloody and desperate 
engagement took the name it has since borne. In this 
position, from early morning until near noon, the national 
forces awaited the shock of battle, resisting, at the same 
rime, the skirmishes of the advancing enemy, who were 
moving in three columns with an aggregate force of nearly 



GAIXES' M ILL. 



83 



80,000. The first column marched on the line of the 
Chickakoniin y ; another a short distance inland, and the 
third advanced straight on our right at Goal Harbour. 

A little before 12 o'clock the conflict opened with the 
thunder of a hundred and twenty cannon on both sides, 
shaking the earth for miles around. It was not long before 
the whole scene of action was enveloped in smoke, and 
under the mantle which shut out the light of a bright 
summer day commenced the deadly struggle of the contend- 
ing hosts. Charge followed charge on the part of the 
Confederates, desperate and almost reckless in their fury, 
but they were met by our troops with a stubborn front 
and repulsed one after the other, with immense destruction to 
the assailants. Large masses of men swayed to and fro over 
the undulating ground, like the surges of the sea illuminated 
by lightning; gleaming bayonets and flashes of musketry being 
visible through the dense cloud that overhung the scene. 
Now the cavalry come into play ; for 20,000 Southern reserves 
come fresh into action upon our flank, and our infantry are 
getting exhausted, and what is worse, they are running out 
of ammunition. The contest of three to one is too much for 
them, with the artillery matched nearly gun for gun. The 
order for the Fifth regular cavalry to charge is at length 
given. The French Prince de Joinville, and the Due de 
Chartres, and Conite de Paris, were near the spot, and the 
former describes the charge as a glorious sight, and a terrible 
slaughter. It absolutely failed to retrieve the ground the 
troops were evidently losing fast. Every reserve we had 
was by this time thrown into the field, while fresh troops of 
the enemy came pouring in. Our lines were wavering at 
different points, though they were not yet broken. The 
round-shot and shell from the batteries were tearing up the 
ground, so that the contestants were carrying on the 
sanguinary conflict in an atmosphere of dust and smoke, 
through which the confusion seemed greater. At this 
juncture it became evident that General Porter must be 
re-enforced, or his little army of protection must fall before 
the superior numbers of the foe. Accordingly, General 
McClellan ordered General Simmer, whose corps was at 
Fair Oaks, to send up two brigades to support Porter. 
Sumner selected the brigades of French and Meagher. 
They started at double quick, making short time of the five 



84 



THOMAS FRANCIS' MEAGHER. 



miles that lay between them and the battle-field. The order 
was given at five o'clock in the afternoon. They reached 
the scene of action soon after to find General Porter's troops 
retiring stubbornly, though considerably broken and dis- 
ordered. General French being the senior officer, commanded 
the two brigades. Meagher led the Irish Brigade. Forcing 
their way through the retreating masses of Porter's com- 
mand, they gained the crest of a hill, formed into line, and 
with one wild shout, swept down upon the enemy, then 
flushed with victory. Through a storm of shot and bullets 
they went — on, on, to the very faces of the foe. The shock 
was almost instantaneous. The enemy made a momentary 
stand. They were wholly unprepared for the impetuosity 
of the Irish troops, and after a fierce struggle, the whole 
force fell back, both infantry and artillery. The retreating 
forces of General Porter began to fall in in the rear of the 
victorious re-enforcements, and Meagher's Brigade stood, 
panting and elated, between the army they had saved and 
the enemy they had vanquished. 
It was Fontenoy repeated ! 

The whole description of the battle reminds one of the 
lines of Southey : — 

" Then more fierce 
The conflict grew ; the din of arms — the yell 
Of savage rage — the shriek of agony — 
The groan of death, commingled in one sound 
Of undistinguished horrors ; while the sun, 
Retiring slow beneath the plain's far verge, 
Shed o'er the quiet hills his fading light." 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE BRIGADE GOES INTO ACTION WITH ECLAT — PERILS 
OF THE REAR- GUARD — MEAGHER IN THE THICK OF 
THE FIGHT. 

WHEN the safety of Pitz- John Porter's army was secured, 
French's and Meagher's brigades were withdrawn, — just at 
the dawn of day, but not before the whole of Porter's army, 
including all the wounded, were transported across the 
Chickahominy. General Meagher with his staff were the 



PEACH ORCHARD. 



85 



last to cross the river. The retreat of the army of the 
Potomac was now fairly commenced. The Irish Brigade 
had rejoined Sumner's Corps. On the 29th General Sumner 
broke camp at Fair Oaks, and took up a position at Allen's 
farm, between Orchard and Savage's stations. The enemy 
here made a furious attack on the right of General Sedg- 
wick's division, but were repulsed. They next fell on the 
left of Eichardson's division, but where forced, after some 
hard fighting, to retire in some disorder. Three times they 
attacked, and each time were repulsed. This fight is known 
in the record of the Brigade as the Battle of Peach Orchard. 
Next day General Franklin communicated to General Sumner 
that the enemy were advancing on Savage's Station, after 
crossing the Chickahominy upon the bridges which they had 
repaired. Sumner hurried up, and soon after noon formed a 
junction with Franklin, and, as senior officer, assumed com- 
mand. The troops under Sumner and Franklin were drawn 
up in an open field to the left of the railroad, the right 
extending down the road and the left resting on the edge of 
the woods. Hancock's brigade was in the woods on the 
right and front, while the brigade of General Brooks held the 
woods to the left. General Burns was on the Williamsburg 
road, and it was here that the enemy made the first attack, 
at four o'clock in the afternoon of an intensely hot day. The 
fight soon became general along the line. Hazzard's, 
Pettit's, Osborne's and Bramhall's batteries were briskly 
engaged. Here the Irish Brigade especially distinguished 
itself. During the battle the Eighty- Eighth, then com- 
manded by Major James Quinlan, made a splendid charge, 
which in a great measure turned the tide of battle. Major 
Quinlan dashingly led the charge in person, inflicting a 
stunning blow upon the enemy at a critical point in the 
action. General Eichardson and General Burns complimented 
the Eighty- Eighth on their valour and efficient services on 
the field. The battle raged until between eight and nine 
o'clock at night, when, after an obstinate fight, the enemy 
were driven from the field. 

The battle of Savage's Station having thus terminated 
successfully for the national army, the retreat was continued 
across the White Oak Swamp, in the direction of Harrison's 
Landing, on the James Eiver, which McClellan had selected 
as the new base. The retreat was not a leisurely affair. It 



86 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



was a vigorous campaign. Richardson's division, to which 
the Irish Brigade was attached, formed the rear-guard, and 
therefore had to meet the enemy — who was pressing on the 
flank of the army — in every attack. The rain was falling in 
torrents when the Brigade commenced its march through 
the White Oak Swamp. By midnight, on the day of the 
battle at Savage's Station, the troops were on the road to 
"White Oak Swamp bridge, which was reached by daylight. 
The Brigade had been now five days in action: had during 
that time but little food and^no rest. General McClellan 
states that the whole army was at this time exhausted. 
How then must it have fared with the rear-guard? Har- 
assed by the foe by day and by night, hungry and weary, 
suffering from the scorching heat of the sun at noontide, and 
the heavy rains at night, the Brigade still went cheerily on, 
sustained by the presence of its commander, who shared 
every discomfort and braved every danger with his men ; 
sustained, too, by the consciousness of duty well per- 
formed, and not a little proud that, despite all the hard work 
and the fearful risks to which they were exposed, the post 
of honour and of danger was assigned to them. 

After the dreary night-march came the battle of White 
Oak Swamp, which opened vigorously about noon on the 
30th by the enemy shelling the divisions of Generals Rich- 
ardson and Smith, and Naglee's brigade, at the White Oak 
bridge. Generals Sumner, Heintzelman, McCall, Kearney, 
Franklin, Hooker, and Slocum were all engaged in this 
action. Richardson's division suffered severely. The prin- 
cipal attack was made by the enemy under Longstreet and 
Hill, nearly 20,000 strong, on McCall's division, who fought 
bravely for an hour, but were compelled to fall back ; but 
Generals Sumner and Hooker gallantly supported him. The 
enemy renewed their attack on Kearney's left, but were 
repulsed with heavy loss. About five o'clock in the after- 
noon, Meagher's Brigade was ordered to move up in quick 
time to Glendale, near Charles City cross-roads, at which 
point the enemy were pushing down in great force. As the 
Brigade advanced at a run, General Sumner, who with his 
staff was on the road, greeted them in passing most cordially, 
saying — " Boys, you go in to save another day." The 
Brigade also received a lusty cheer from the splendid regi- 
ment of Lincoln Cavalry, commanded by Colonel McRey- 



MALVERN HILL. 



67 



nolds, as the Irish troops swept past them, going into the 
field. The battle of Glendale was not finished until dark. 
It was but the continuation of the conflict at "White Oak 
Swamp, and lasted without interruption for ten hours of that 
eventful day. The Federal loss was heavy, and Generals 
McCall, Burns, and Brooks were wounded. The line of 
battle extended two miles and a half. The struggle at 
Glendale was the bloodiest conflict since the day at Fair 
Oaks, and was continued into the darkness of night, but it 
ended by the enemy being routed at all points and driven 
from the field. A writer, describing the battle of Glendale, 
says: — i; Meagher's Irish Brigade rendered itself very con- 
spicuous by the gallantry with which it rushed, with cheers 
that made the welkin ring, upon the swarming Bebels." 
During the passage of the army through White Oak Swamp, 
which was at the same time a march and a series of battles, 
the sun of a fiercely hot June day beat down remorselessly 
upon the heads of the men, many of whom flung away coats 
and knapsacks, and not a few, who escaped the effects of 
shot and shell, fell sun-struck by the road-side. The dead 
and wounded were compelled to be left behind. Every 
available spot at Savage's Station was crowded with the 
sick and wounded, where they had to be abandoned. 

On the first of July the last and most desperate of the 
seven days' battles was fought at Malvern Hill. 

The conduct of Meagher's Brigade at the battle of Mal- 
vern Hill was superb. Three times it went into action, and 
each time won the applause of all who witnessed the gallant 
bearing of the men, and their General, who with his green 
plume dancing, and his sword flashing in front of the fine, 
went conspicuously into the fight. On this occasion General 
Meagher had one of his narrowest escapes from death which, 
amid all the dangers and vicissitudes through which he 
passed, most miraculously spared him. A rifle ball passed 
through the rim of his hat, within quarter of an inch of his 
right temple. Galled up a third time during the battle, the 
Brigade went in at the last moment, when the fortunes of 
the day were in the balance, and saved the left wing of the 
army from being turned, at a period in the progress of the 
battle when such a disaster might have been irreparable. 
Their loss, as may be supposed, was very heavy, both in 
men and officers. Lieutenant Keynolds of the Sixty->iinth 



88 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



fell dead, while Captain Leddy, and Captain O'Donovan, and 
Lieutenant Cahill were dangerously wounded. The horse 
of Major James Cavanagh of the Sixty-Ninth was shot 
dead, pierced by several balls. 

This was the last of the famous seven days' battles, in 
which Meagher showed his fine soldierly qualities. The 
Peninsula campaign was concluded. The Army of the Poto- 
mac had reached Harrison's Landing, and the next thing 
in order was a total change in the plan of attack upon Rich- 
mond, and a change of commanders, which, as events proved, 
resulted in disasters that were only retrieved by the restora- 
tion of General McClellan to the command and the superseding 
of General Pope. 

The Federal army having been ordered to withdraw from 
the Peninsula, General Meagher visited New York in order 
to obtain recruits to fill up his regiments. He was accom- 
panied by the gallant Lieutenant Temple Emmet of his staff. 
He was warmly received in the city, but found considerable 
difficulty in obtaining recruits, as were also the efforts of 
General D. E. Sickles, who was engaged in a similar duty. 
Several new regiments were then being raised in the 
metropolis, and it was difficult to obtain men for those in the 
field. Other circumstances also militated against recruiting 
for the veteran regiments. Meagher made several stirring 
appeals to his countrymen to join the standard of the 
republic. He made a magnificent address at the Armory 
of the Seventh Regiment New York National Guard. He 
was invited to the theatres, where he was received with the 
greatest enthusiasm. On these occasions he announced that 
he accepted the invitations with the hope of stimulating 
recruiting. His efforts, however, met with little success. 
But while their General was in New York endeavouring to 
recruit their exhausted ranks, the Brigade, as usual, was 
busy. The enemy still held an annoying position, on 
Malvern Hill, and frequent scouting parties were thrown 
out in that direction, in many of which portions of the 
Brigade, the Sixty-Third and Eighty-Eighth in particular, 
played a conspicuous part. General Meagher returned to 
Harrison's Landing only to find the army on the eve of 
moving, and to direct the retrograde march of his command 
through Williamsburg and Yorktown back to Fortress 
Monroe. 



ANTIETAM. 



89 



After this came the famous battle of Antietam, in which 
Meagher's command played a glorious part. In the pre- 
ceding actions, at Centreville and Manassas, the Brigade 
was not engaged. But in the battle of Antietam it fought 
gallantly, and made some terrible sacrifices. 

How the action at Antietam commenced with Eichard- 
son' s division, of which Meagher's was the second Brigade, 
General McClellan thus relates : — 

" General Eichardson's division of the Second corps, 
pressing the rear-guard of the enemy with vigour, passed 
Boonsboro' and Keedysville, and came upon the main body 
of the enemy, occupying in large force a strong position a 
few miles beyond the latter place. 

"It had been hoped to engage the enemy during the 
15th. Accordingly, instructions were given that if the 
enemy were overtaken on the march they should be attacked 
at once ; if found in heavy force and in position, the corps 
in advance should be placed in position for attack, and await 
my arrival. On reaching the advanced position of our troops, 
I found but two divisions, Kichardson's and Sykes's, in 
position ; the other troops were halted in the road — the 
head of the column some distance in rear of Eichardson. 

" The enemy occupied a strong position on the heights, 
on the west side of Antietam creek, displaying a large force 
of infantry and cavalry, with numerous batteries of artillery, 
which opened on our columns as they appeared in sight on 
the Keedysville road and Sharpsburg turnpike, which fire 
was returned by Captain Tidbali's light battery, Second 
United States artillery, and Pettit's battery, First New York 
artillery. 

" The division of General Eichardson, following close on 
the heels of the retreating foe, halted and deployed near 
Antietam river, on the right of the Sharpsburg road. 
General Sykes, leading on the division of regulars on the 
old Sharpsburg road, came up and deployed to the left of 
General Eichardson, on the left of the road." 

This was on the 1 6th of September. During that after- 
noon and night Antietam creek was crossed at several points, 
but not without terrible fighting. At daylight the battle 
was fairly began by General Hooker's corps, who drove the 
enemy from the open fields into the woods near the Hagers- 
town and Sharpsburg turnpike. The fighting soon spread 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



over the whole line, and the action became general. For 
several honrs the conflict raged. The loss of officers was 
becoming serious. General Mansfield fell mortally wounded. 
Generals Hooper, Sedgwick, Dana, Crawford, and Hartsuff, 
were also wounded. The enemy were being gradually 
forced back into the woods. While the hottest portion of 
the battle was on the right, General French was making a 
diversion to the left, by order of General Sumner. In this 
direction the enemy was forced back almost to the crest of 
the hill, but he was there posted in great strength in a 
sunken road or natural rifle-pit. In the rear were strong 
bodies of the enemy drawn up in a corn-field. From the 
sunken road and the corn-field our men had to take a terrific 
fire of musketry, which they returned fiercely. Here the 
Irish Brigade came most conspicuously into the fray. 

" On the left of General French," says Gen. McClellan 
in his report, " General Richardson's division was hotly 
engaged. Having crossed the Antietam about 9.30 A.M., 
at the ford crossed by the other divisions of Sumner's corps, 
it moved on a line nearly parallel to the Antietam, and 
formed in a ravine behind the high grounds overlooking 
Roulette's house ; the Second (Irish) Brigade, commanded 
by General Meagher, on the right ; the Third brigade, 
commanded by General Caldwell, on his left, and the brigade 
commanded by Colonel Brooks, Fifty-Third Pennsylvania 
Volunteers, in support. As the division moved forward to 
take its position on the field, the enemy directed a fire of 
artillery against it, but, owing to the irregularities of the 
ground, did but little damage. 

"Meagher's brigade, advancing steadily, soon became 
engaged with the enemy posted to the left and in front of 
Roulette's house. It continued to advance under a heavy 
fire nearly to the crest of the hill overlooking Piper's house, 
the enemy being posted in a continuation of the sunken road 
and cornfield before referred to. Here the brave Irish 
brigade opened upon the enemy a terrific musketry fire. 

" All of General Sumner's corps was now engaged : 
General Sedgwick on the right; General French in the 
centre, and General Richardson on the left. The Irish 
brigade sustained its well-earned reputation. After suffer- 
ing terribly in officers and men, and strewing the ground 
with their enemies as they drove them back, their ammuni- 



CHA NQELL ORS VILLE. 



tion nearly expended, and their commander, Gen. Meagher, 
disabled by the fall of his horse, shot under him, this 
brigade was ordered to give place to General Caldwell's 
brigade, which advanced to a short distance in its rear. 
The lines were passed by the Irish brigade breaking by 
company to the rear, and General Caldwell's by company to 
the front, as steady as on drill." 

Severe indeed was the loss of the Brigade. Captain 
John Kavanagh of the Sixty- Third— one of Smith O'Brien's 
companions at Balingarry — was shot dead at the head of 
his company, while charging on the concealed works of the 
enemy behind a fence at the crest of the hill ; and here fell 
many other gallant officers 

The battle of Antietam lasted fourteen hours. Nearly 
two hundred thousand men, and five hundred pieces of 
artillery were engaged. The shroud of night enveloped the 
struggling hosts. The battle may be said to have been 
fought upon the very threshold of the North, with Penn- 
sylvania, and indeed the Xational Capital itself, almost at 
the mercy of the enemy. The invasion was checked there ; 
for the Confederate army retired south of the Potomac on 
the next day, having lost severely in men and war material, 
from the time at which they occupied Frederick, the capital 
of Maryland, on the 7th of September, to the defeat at 
Antietam on the 17th. 

And so from battle-field to battle-field Meagher led his 
troops, even to the deadly assault on the hill at Fredericks- 
burg, until the last fatal fight at ChancellorsviUe, after 
which he had no longer a brigade to command in the Army 
of the Potomac. Let me tell the story of this last grand 
battle of the Irish Brigade. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE BATTLE OF CHANCELLORS VILLE — DECIMATION OF 
THE BRIGADE— MEAGHER'S FAREWELL. 

The battle of ChancellorsviUe, in which the Irish Brigade 
played so conspicuous a part, was fought on Sunday, the 
3d of 'May, in the vicinity of Mr Chancellor's house. About 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



8 o'clock in the morning the Brigade, which had been march- 
ing for three days, through forests and swamps, was ordered 
to the front to support the Fifth Maine battery. Shot and 
shell were tearing through the woods as the men advanced. 
Meagher, who led the column, had several miraculous 
escapes. For two hours they maintained their position in 
support of the battery, which was placed in front of the woods, 
commanding the plain towards Chancellorsville. It was 
terribly exposed to the fire of the enemy, but held its ground 
until all the horses and men were either killed or wounded. 
Corporal Lebroke and one private, finding that they could no 
longer work the guns, blew up the caissons. The Irish Brigade, 
under the immediate direction of General Meagher, then 
rushed to save the guns. The men seized the ropes, and in 
the midst of a terrific fusilade drew the guns into the woods. 
Several of the gallant fellows were shot down, but their 
comrades pursued the work steadily until the battery was 
out of danger. It was the fourth battalion of the Brigade, 
One Hundred and Sixteenth Pennsylvania Volunteers, assisted 
by several of the Sixty- Xinth and Sixty-Third New York, 
under command of Major St Clair Mulholland, which accom- 
plished this important service. Had the battery fallen into 
the hands of the enemy, it would have been turned upon the 
Federal troops, and undoubtedly have done terrible havoc 
upon their lines. This was the second essential service 
which Meagher's Brigade performed in this protracted fight. 
On the previous day, when the Eleventh Army Corps was 
endeavouring to hold a position on the Gordonsville road, 
the assaults of the enemy were so terrific that it broke in a 
panic, and fell back pell-mell towards United States Ford — 
General Howard doing his utmost, in vain, to reorganize 
them. Meagher's Brigade intercepted the fugitives by 
throwing a line across the road and into the woods at Scott's 
Mills. Finding their retreat cut off, they rejoined the army. 

"When the men of the Brigade had drawn the guns of 
the Fifth Maine Batteiy off the field, General Hancock rode 
up to General Meagher and called out, " General Meagher, 
you command the retreat ! " In this action the Irish Brigade 
numbered only five hundred and twenty men. It had ere 
this time been reduced by continual fighting to only half a 
regiment. In this battle fell Captain John C. Lynch, of the 
Sixty-Third New York Volunteers, a gallant officer, a genial, 



HIS BRIGADE DECIMATED. 



93 



social, and estimable gentleman. While leaning against a 
tree in the woods, directing the fire of his company, he was 
struck by a ball in the arm, bnt though seriously hurt, he 
refused to leave his post. In a moment a shell came 
hurtling along, and striking the brave young officer in its 
course, literally dashed him to pieces. The scabbard of his 
sword, bent like a hook, was all that was left. His remains 
were never recovered. 

Chancellorsville was the last grand battle in which the 
Brigade fought under its old commander. Reduced in 
numbers from its once flourishing condition, it presented 
now not men enough to comprise a regiment. From the 
first moment that it became a component part of the Army 
of the Potomac it shared every danger, and participated in 
almost every conflict. No portion of that grand army 
endured more hardships, or cheerfully made more sacrifices. 
There was not a camp, however dismal and cheerless, not 
a march, however weary and painful; not a picket-line, 
however exposed ; not a turning point on any battle-field, 
that the green flag was not seen, that the steady tramp and 
the ringing cheer was not heard, and the stalwart arm of 
the Irish soldier was not felt with terrible effect. More 
than decimated as it was after the battles of Chancellorsville 
and Scott's Mills, its efficiency as a brigade was no longer 
possible, and no one was more conscientiously convinced of 
this than General Meagher himself. After the heroic but 
destructive assault on the enemy's batteries at Fredericks- 
burg, which left his command sadly reduced, he appealed to 
the War Department for permission to withdraw his Brigade 
from active duty in the field for a brief time, to enable the 
regiments to fill up their thinned ranks ; but the Secretary 
of War gave no heed to the request; did not even con- 
descend to reply to it, although the facts embraced in 
General Meagher's statement were undoubtedly well known 
to the War Department. 

The operations of the Irish Brigade in the battles on the 
Rappahannock were communicated to the author at the time, 
in the following terms, in a letter from General Meagher : — 

"Four days previous to the main body of the army 
crossing the Rappahannock, the Brigade was occupied in 
guarding Bank's and the United States Ford — the latter 
being seven miles above the former, and the former four 



94 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 



miles distant from the camp of the Brigade. On the night 
of the 29th, the regiments of the Brigade at the United 
States Ford moved down to Bank's Ford, and there rejoined the 
rest of my command. Two hours later, the entire command 
moved off to the Upper Ford, effecting a march of nine miles 
in utter darkness, with great alacrity and spirit ; arriving on 
the ground where the rest of the army were bivouacked, 
within a mile and a half of the Ford at break of day. That 
evening the Brigade crossed the river. Four of the 
regiments (or rather four of the poor little skeletons of 
regiments) composing the Brigade were ordered to take up a 
position two miles off the main road from the Ford to Chan- 
cel! orsville, and hold it firmly ; that position being on the 
extreme left of the Federal line, and approached by an excel- 
lent by-road leading from Fredericksburg. The fifth regi- 
ment — the Eighty-Eighth of the New York Volunteers — 
was detached by order of Major-General Hancock, com- 
manding the Division, and proceeded to the front, where 
they occupied a position until the morning of the 3d of 
May, being stationed on the extreme left of the front at 
Chancellor sville, in support of a section of Thomas's battery 
(Fourth United States Artillery), which commanded the 
main road leading from Fredericksburg, through Chancel- 
lorsville, to Gordons ville. On the evening of the 1st of 
May, the four regiments of my Brigade were ordered to the 
right, and there took up a strong position, under my imme- 
diate command and instructions. My little force was posted 
to the best advantage, and established two guns of Pettit's 
famous rifled battery in position. Whilst at this point (and 
it was a most important one, and vital to be held because it 
commanded the main road to the Ford and Chancellorsville, 
and in the hands of the enemy would have been fatal to our 
army) the Brigade rendered the most valuable service in 
driving back the torrent of fugitives from the Eleventh 
Corps, whom the sudden onslaught and terrific musketry of 
the enemy had routed, and completely struck them with 
panic. About eight o'clock the following morning, May the 
3d, orders were received to march my command at once to 
the front, which was effected promptly and with the greatest 
enthusiasm — the little Brigade passing with a truly soldierly 
step and dash through long lines and masses of troops 
drawn up on either side of the road leading to the front. 



MEAGHER S RESIGNATION. 



05 



Taking up a position, in line of battle, a few paces to the 
rear of the large brick house at Chancellorsville, which had 
been until a few minutes before General Hooker's head- 
quarters, the Brigade was exposed for two hours and a half 
to a most galling fire of rifle-balls, canister, shrapnel, and 
shell. Nevertheless, without swerving an inch, they held 
their ground, until General Hancock, riding past from the 
front, where he had bravely stood until the enemy's infantry 
were but a few hundred paces from him, ordered me to form 
my command at once in column and bring up the rear. This 
was steadily and fearlessly done, — the Eighty-Eighth New- 
York Volunteers, under Colonel Patrick Kelly, being the 
very last regiment of the Federal army to leave the front. 
They had only done so ten minutes before the enemy's 
infantry dashed over our breast-works and took possession 
with tremendous cheering. Previous to the Irish Brigade 
bringing up the retreat, a considerable portion of it — chiefly 
the One Hundred and Sixteenth Pennsylvania Volunteers, 
under Major St. Clair Mulholland — were engaged in hauling 
off the abandoned guns of the Fifth Maine battery, which 
had been utterly destroyed, within ten minutes after it had 
taken position at the front, by the terrific fire of the enemy's 
artillery. Three of the Eighty-Eighth mounted the horses 
attached to one of the pieces (the gunners and drivers 
having all been killed or desperately wounded), and rattled 
off with it in glorious style. 

" For the two days and nights intervening between this 
disastrous morning and that of the 6th of May (the morning 
the army recrossed the Eappahannock), the Irish Brigade, 
along with the other brigades of Hancock's Division, was 
right in front on the new line of defence, and held their 
ground, under the incessant fire of the enemy's sharp- 
shooters and pickets most nobly.'"' 

In the position which the Brigade was placed after the 
battle of Chancellorsville, General Meagher resolved to 
tender his resignation as commander of the remnant left to 
him, which he did in the following words : — 

' ' Headquarters Irish Brigade, 
" Hancock's Division, Couch's Corps, 

"Army of the Potomac, May 8th, 1S63. 

" Major John Hancock, Assist. Adj't Gen'l, 

"I beg most respectfully to tender you, and through 



96 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



you to the proper authorities, my resignation as Brigadier- 
General commanding what was once known as the Irish 
Brigade. That Brigade no longer exists. The assault on 
the enemy's works on the 13th December last reduced it to 
something less than a minimum regiment of infantry. For 
several weeks it remained in this exhausted condition. 
Brave fellows from the convalescent camp and from the 
sick-beds at home gradually re-enforced this handful of 
devoted men. Nevertheless, it failed to reach the strength 
and proportions of anything like an effective regiment. 

" These facts I represented, as clearly and forcibly as 
it was in my power to do, in a memorial to the Secretary of 
War ; in which memorial I prayed that a brigade which 
had rendered such service, and incurred such distressing 
losses, should be temporarily relieved from duty in the field, 
so as to give it time and opportunity in some measure to 
renew itself. 

" The memorial was in vain. It never even was 
acknowledged. The depression caused by this ungenerous 
and inconsiderate treatment of a gallant remnant of a brigade 
that had never once failed to do its duty most liberally and 
heroically, almost unfitted me to remain in command. True, 
however, to those who had been true to me — true to a posi- 
tion which I considered sacred under the circumstances — I 
remained with what was left of my brigade ; and though 
feeling that it was to a sacrifice rather than to a victory that 
we were going, I accompanied them, and led them through 
all the operations required of them at Scott's Mills and 
Chancellorsville beyond the Rappahannock. 

" A mere handful of my command did its duty at those 
positions with a fidelity and resolution which won for it the 
admiration of the army. It would be my greatest happiness, 
as it would surely be my highest honour, to remain in the com- 
panionship and charge of such men ; but to do so any longer 
would be to perpetuate a public deception, in which the 
hard- won honours of good soldiers, and in them the military 
reputation of a brave old race, would inevitably be involved 
and compromised. I cannot be a party to this wrong. My 
heart, my conscience, my pride, all that is truthful, manful, 
sincere, and just within me forbid it. 

" In tendering my resignation, however, as the Brigadier- 
General in command of this poor vestige and relic of the 



THE PARTING. 



97 



Irish Brigade, I beg sincerely to assure you that my services, 
in any capacity that can prove useful, are freely at the 
summons and disposition of the Government of the United 
States. That Government, and the cause, and the liberty, 
the noble memories, and the future it represents, are entitled, 
unquestionably and unequivocally, to the life of every 
citizen who has sworn allegiance to it, and partaken of its 
grand protection. But while I offer my own life to sustain 
this good Government, I feel it to be my first duty to do 
nothing that will wantonly imperil the lives of others, or, 
what would be still more grievous and irreparable, inflict 
sorrow and humiliation upon a race, who having lost almost 
everything else, find in their character for courage and 
loyalty an invaluable gift, which I, for one, will not be so 
vain or selfish as to endanger. 

" I have the honour to be most respectfully and truly 
yours, 

" Thomas Francis Meagheb, 

" Brigadier-General Commanding." 

On the 14th of May, General Meagher's resignation was 
officially accepted. In his withdrawal from the honours and 
emoluments of his command the grand old passion for the 
dignity of his race asserted its supremacy over all other 
sentiments, save that of averting the wanton slaughter of 
his brave soldiers. 

It may be imagined how keenly the resignation of 
General Meagher was felt by the men he had so long been 
associated with in scenes of honour and of danger — who 
arrayed themselves under the war-worn flags — 

" Few, and faint, but fearless still ! " 

Though no longer Meagher's Irish Brigade, the fragment 
of the original organization had still some work to do, and 
they lost none of their old prestige on the battle-fields that 
succeeded Chancellorsville. 

Colonel Patrick Kelly, of the Eighty-Eighth, assumed 
command of the Brigade, as senior officer, after General 
Meagher's resignation was officially announced. On the 
same day, the officers of the Sixty-Ninth, Sixty-Third, and 
Eighty-Eighth made application for the consolidation of the 
few men they commanded into one regiment. Alas ! there 

G 



08 



TEOZIAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



was not a full regiment left of the once glorious Brigade. 
Captain W. J. Nagle, of the Eighty- Eighth, writing from 
the camp near Falmouth, on the 18th of May, 1863, to a 
New York journal, says : — u The Irish Brigade has ceased 
to exist. The resignation of our beloved chief, General 
Meagher, has been accepted, and with him go our hearts, 
our hopes, and our aspirations. The history of the Irish 
Brigade in the United States Army is closed !" 

The parting of the General and his comrades was sorrow- 
ful and affecting. It was more than this — it was sublime. 
The Commander who shared equal risks and endured equal 
privations with the humblest soldier in the ranks, when 
necessity demanded it ; who had cheered the weary column 
on the march ; enjoyed and inspired the pleasures of many 
an encampment ; who had confronted danger on the battle- 
field, the foremost amongst those who never knew fear, and 
who trusted to his leadership, was compelled by a sense of 
duty, from which there was no appeal, to sever the ties of 
long association and companionship, which mutual danger 
and mutual suffering had rendered sacred. We cannot be 
surprised, then, that tears rolled down veteran cheeks in 
that column which received the farewell of its chieftain ; 
that a sad and solemn — " God bless you " — in broken voices 
accompanied the kindly grasp of the hand which General 
Meagher gave to every man in the line. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE ETOWAH COMMAND — DEFENCE OF CHATTANOOGA — 
EE COGNITION OF MEAGHER'S SERVICES. 

The Government was not long in accepting Meagher's 
proffered services in a new scene, from the battle-fields of 
Virginia. When in November, 1864, Major -General Stead- 
man joined the forces of General Thomas at Nashville, the 
command of the Etowah District was transferred to Acting 
Major-General Meagher. The headquarters were then at 
Chattanooga. The district was quite an extensive one, and 
comprised nearly three hundred miles of railroad, and 
ZuVy two hundred miles of river communication; all of 



GEN. STE ADMAN'S LETTER. 



99 



which the new commandant had to protect with a force 
of 12,000 infantry, two hundred guns, on the forts t,nd in 
the field, and three regiments of cavalry. In this position 
he was isolated from other portions of the Federal army, 
and had to depend entirely upon his own resources. Here 
came into play Meagher's capacity for meeting emergencies, 
a capacity which was never wanting when self-reliance and 
resolute action were the most effective weapons. As he 
calmed the passions of the crowd in the streets of his native 
Waterford at a moment when one word from his lips would 
perchance have precipitated an act of useless bloodshed ; or 
when he marched defiantly, in company with Devin Keilly 
and his other colleagues, through the mass of armed police 
in the streets of Dublin, at a time when the Viceregal 
Government would have been only too glad to provoke a 
collision with the populace ; or as he calmly stood face to 
face with ignominious death in Clonmel Court House ; so 
did he meet the responsibility of the Etowah command. He 
had no army to back him. His district was fairly overrun 
by guerrillas, with whom he sometimes dealt with the full 
severity of martial law. He had to furnish supplies to 
General Steadman through an unprotected country, which 
he did promptly as fast as they were needed ; and thus," for 
seven weeks, he held that part of Tennessee, until, on the 
7th of January, 1865, General Steadman returned to relieve 
him — Meagher then being ordered to join the army of 
General Sherman, on its famous march to the sea. But 
Meagher did not participate in that expedition, and was 
therefore spared the horrors from which his generous nature 
would have shrunk with as much revolt as from the desola- 
tion in Ireland which he was compelled to witness years 
before, in 1847, and which tinged even his most genial 
moods with sadness. 

Before his departure from Chattanooga, General Stead- 
man tendered to General Meagher a full recognition of his 
services in these words : — 

"Headquarters, District of the Etowah, 
" Chattanooga, Jan. 12, 1865. 

" My Dear General, 

u As you are about leaving this Department with your 
command, to take part in the projected campaign of General 



100 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



Sherman, I beg leave to express to you my profound regret 
that the fortunes of war call you from this Department. 
Your administration of the affairs of the District of the 
Etowah, while communications were interrupted, and your 
command isolated by the presence of Hood's army before 
Nashville, as well as your splendid success in protecting the 
railroad and telegraph to Knoxville and Dalton, the steamboat 
transportation on the Tennessee river, the public property 
exposed to capture by the enemy's cavalry, and the harmony 
and good order maintained by you throughout the District, 
during the trying period in which all these responsibilities 
devolved upon you, have given me much satisfaction, and 
secured for you the confidence and esteem of the Major- 
General commanding the Department, as well as the officers 
of the entire command. 

" All deeply regret the necessity which takes you from 
us ; but the hope that you may be pleasantly situated, and 
have a command worthy of your splendid abilities, reconciles 
us to the separation. 

" I am, General, with esteem, your friend, 
" James B. Steadman, 

" Major-General Commanding. 

"Brig. Gen. T. F. Meagher, 

" Coin. Prov'l Div., Army of the Tennessee." 

General Meagher's response was of course characteristic, 
and rich in glowing language. For example, in alluding to 
the good-will of the citizens of Chattanooga, and the civil 
officials of the Department, he says : — 

" The former proved, with the liveliest good humour and 
enthusiasm in their spontaneous acceptance of the proposi- 
tion of a civic guard, and all the obligations and penalties 
attached to it, their readiness to fall in with the regularly 
organized garrison, and fight to the death, side by side with 
their enlisted brothers, at a moment's notice, should the 
daring of the enemy of the American flag, its honour, and 
its glory, have summoned them to the defence of Chattanooga, 
and the vindication of the heroic memories that crown the 
mountains that guard it, and render sacred, as well as 
notable for all time, the waters that chaunt without ceasing 
— whether wildly in the storm, or solemnly in the beautiful 
calm night, or lovingly in the sunshine, in the midst of 



MEAGHER APPOINTED SECRETARY. 101 



green leaves and the perfumes of the summer — the eternal 
lyrics of the dead and living conquerors to whom they owe 
their fame." 

And much more he said in the same strain ; speaking all 
the while modestly of himself, but sparing no gallant words 
of praise for those who served under him. This was his 
wont throughout his whole military career. He left his own 
praise, his valour, his devotion, to be recorded by those who 
loved him ; but for his men and officers, he reserved the 
right to speak himself, and this he did in his official reports, 
and in his public and private correspondence, most lavishly. 
His fresh, hearty, frank nature did not change with time or 
exile. From boyhood until death, it was the same rare 
jewel which sparkled so brightly in the dual crown of the 
hero and the martyr which pressed his forehead almost 
before the fulness of manhood was upon him. 



CHAPTER X. 

HIS CAREER IN MONTANA TERRITORY — MEAGHER AP- 
POINTED SECRETARY AND ACTING GOVERNOR — HE 
EIGHTS THE POLITICIANS— RAISING THE MILITIA — 
JOURNEY TO FORT BENTON— HIS DEATH. 

MEAGHER'S career as a soldier ended with his brilliant 
services in the command of the Etowah district. The 
President, Andrew Johnson, recognizing his merits, and 
acknowledging the obligations of the Government, tendered 
him the Secretaryship of the Territory of Montana, which 
he cheerfully accepted. Life in this new, wild, grand 
territory, with its unsettled population, the possible dangers 
attaching to the position, the fresh developments in mineral 
resources which the territory then promised, and which it 
has since realised, all these were charms irresistible to 
Meagher. The unavoidable absence from the territory of 
the Governor, Hon. Sydney Eclgerton, the interregnum 
pending the appointment of Green Clay Smith, necessarily 
imposed upon the new Secretary the duties of Acting 
Governor, and from his induction to office until the sad 
close, he held that position. 



102 TH02JAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



Previous to his starting for the "West, Meagher was 
passing some days at the delightful residence of the late 
Daniel Devlin in Manhattanville. Dating a note from this 
place on September 22 d, 1864, he urged naje to come there 
and see him, saying — " Do come, and bring any true friend 
(or two) of mine along with you, you can find. It may be 
the last time (God only knows) that you shall see me, for I 
go to a fierce and frightful region of gorillas ! " But I did 
see him later than that, for owing to delays in the Fiske 
expedition he did not depart until the following summer. 
The last interview was at his residence in East Twenty-third 
street, when I grasped his hand at what proved to be a final 
parting. There was no sadness on either side, because the 
veil was not lifted from the dismal future, nor could we 
penetrate its mists. Neither dreamed that it was a last 
meeting. Meagher, indeed, was particularly joyous that 
day. I found him leaning against the mantel-piece, perus- 
ing a letter which he had just received from his boy in 
Waterford, a fine photograph of whom was before him; 
looking in almost every lineament a counterpart of his 
gallant father. He was laughing at the pleasant and loving 
things the lad had written, and handed me the letter, with a 
proud allusion to the manliness of his style. As this youth 
was born in Ireland, of course Meagher had never looked 
upon his face. He lived only upon the memories of his 
childish correspondence, and such delineations as this one, 
furnished by the hand of art. 

On his westward journey the impression seemed to grow 
upon him that he would never return, though his subsequent 
correspondence was more hopeful. Writing to me from St.- 
Paul's, Minnesota, on the 27th of July, 1865, while en route 
to Montana, he says, in reference to a work relating to the 
" Irish Brigade," on which the present writer was then 
engaged — 

" Now that I am on the eve of starting on what may be 
a dangerous expedition (for the Indians, we understand, 
along the route are fiendishly ferocious), and I may not live 
to vindicate myself, I am justified, I think, in entreating of 
you, as one of the very truest friends I have known in 
America, that you have full justice done me. Apart from 
this consideration, I desire that this little monument, at 
least, will be dedicated to the memory of our brave boys, 



ARRIVAL AT VIRGINIA CITY, 



103 



and that in the permanent commemoration of their generous 
and heroic services to the nation, an argument shall be 
planted deep and irrefutably in the history of the times 
against those who hereafter, in social or public life, may be 
disposed to disparage our race, or assail it in a proscriptive 
spirit. 

" Very affectionately yours, 

" T. F. Meagher." 

The reputation of his " brave boys" never seemed to pass 
from his thoughts ! The heroic record of " our race 99 must 
not be disparaged, if sword or pen can shield it from tarnish ! 
This latter idea was the passion and purpose of all his later 
years. He wrought it into practical life on the field of 
battle. He preached it, in words of rare and fiery eloquence, 
from every rostrum. He dreamed of it, and clung to it, as 
his words just quoted show, during his distant journeyings 
on the path to those new scenes and duties from which he 
never returned. 

His arrival at Virginia City, the present seat of govern- 
ment in Montana, he announces in this hurried and exu- 
berant fashion, after being three months on the tedious route 
from the Mississippi to the interior: — 

" Virginia City, 
'•'Montana Territory, Oct. 6, 1865. 

"My Deae Lyons, 

" The enclosed slips from our local paper — the ' Montana 
Post' — will inform you of my arrival at my destination at 
last, and my being Acting Governor of the richest territory of 
the Union. I want you, like a good fellow, to have this 
announced in the 1 Herald? and, if you can, it would gratify 
me to have the extracts transcribed. I have not time to 
write anything more to you just now — will do so, however, 
before long. 

" Believe me, with truest regards, 

"Most cordially your friend, 

" T. F. Meagher." 

Of course he had no time to write more just then ; for 
were not the duties of state falling thick upon him, and the 



104 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



politicians and place-hunters hemming him in with a cordon 
of greedy applications ? But he did write afterwards to all 
his friends pleasant and cheerful letters, enough to keep the 
territorial post-offices busy. 

TTith fidelity to his trust, and in strict accordance with 
the political opinions he conscientiously entertained, those 
duties were performed. He had difficulties to overcome 
which to a man of less firmness might have proved insur- 
mountable. The Territory of Montana, young as it was. 
was not exempt from the dire mischief of partisanship. The 
papers, on heralding his approach in words of enthusiastic 
praise, did not fail to drop a hint about " hireling agitators 
and selfish politicians " whose influence he would have to 
combat. All these he had to meet and grapple with on the 
very threshold of his career, in September, 1865. For the 
matter of that, his whole Governorship embraced a constant 
struggle, bravely and persistently conducted with all 
Meagher's known courage and undaunted obstinacy, for the 
recognition of popular rights, and his own authority to defend 
them. He had a subtle party to contend with; a party 
that showed in their bitter opposition to his manly, honest 
policy, the disappointment they felt on finding in the new 
Governor a man who, though he was a " soldier of the 
Union," was not a slave to faction, and could not be moulded 
to their purposes ; nor could his fine spirit be dragged 
through the muddy channels of partisanship. The politicians 
could not get hold of him, and so the radical portion of them 
set to work to secretly abuse him. and intrigue against the 
measures he proposed for the good government of the 
Territory. Meagher's political opinions at this time cannot 
be better expressed than in his own words, contained in 
a letter written to a Democratic Convention in Montana. 
He says : — 

"As a Democrat I took the field — as a Democrat went 
through the war : the war over, I am precisely the same I 
was when it broke out. The Democratic party ; from the 
day of its foundation to this hour, was essentially the 
party of the Union, the party of national aims, civil 
and religious liberty — Americanism in its broadest, loftiest, 
grandest signification. Satisfied of this, I could belong 
to no other party. Belonging to it, I feel that I belong 
to the nation, to its great traditions, and that patriotism 



FIRST OFFICIAL ACTION. 



105 



which saw in the Constitution and the well-defined 
government of the States, peace, honour, and prosperity for 
the nation throughout its length and breadth. There are 
few people who can forget, though there may be many who 
will deny, the delight with which the -Democratic support, 
given to the Republican Administration from the outset to 
the close of the civil war, was acknowledged by the partisans 
of the Administration. Without that support, it was 
admitted, and by none more readily than by the President 
and his Cabinet, that the war for the Union must prove a 
failure." 

The first official action of the Acting Governor, for the 
purpose of voting supplies for the expenses of the Govern- 
ment, was to call together the Legislature. His constitu- 
tional right to do so was disputed, and indeed he at first 
doubted it himself, but on consideration, like Andrew Jack- 
son, Governor Meagher " took the responsibility," called the 
Legislature to assemble, and defended his course afterwards 
very ably in his Message, and in a speech delivered at the 
Democratic Convention in Helena, February 21st, 1866. 
The details of this part of his official career would be tedious. 
It is enough to know, and for those who knew and loved 
him, to feel proud of, that his official career was characterized 
by great firmness and discretion, and a personal boldness 
which was the distinguishing feature of his whole gallant 
and stormy life. The attacks by the Indians upon the 
residents of Port Benton, on the Upper Missouri, compelled 
him to call for volunteers, as there was no militia in the 
territory. As he said himself, with his usual good humour, 
which was never suppressed, even in moments of difficulty 
or danger, "I am Commander-in-Chief, not of an invincible, 
but of an invisible militia." It was in procuring the arma- 
ment for these volunteers, who responded cheerfully to his 
call, that the circumstances occurred which led to his death, 
a lamentable event, of which — with poignant sorrow — I 
shall have to speak hereafter. 

Beset as he was by the Republican politicians who 
sought to rule the Territory, and hoped to control him, 
Meagher was unyielding in his design to govern for the 
people, and in favour of their interests, despite what he 
called the " malignant hostility of the more conspicuous and 
dictatorial of the Republican party." According to the 



106 



THOMAS FEAN CIS MEAGHER. 



means at his command, and the time allotted to him, he 
succeeded in doing this to the fullest of his expectations. 
Charges were laid against him by his political enemies 
touching his " loyalty," that he was not unfriendly to the 
South — which the bigots expected he would be — and some- 
what favoured the interests of Southern men in the Territory 
of Montana. To these innuendoes (for they never extended 
beyond that wretched class of slander) Meagher answered 
with this noble declaration of his sentiments, clothed in that 
beauty of language which, like the silvery tongues of 
angels, flowed as freely from his hps as mountain streams 
bubble forth in spring-time when loosed from the frosty 
chains of winter. This is what he said in his speech at 
Helena, on the 21st of February, 1866 : — 

" On the battle-field, which they had heroically held for 
four tempestuous years, the soldiers of the South had low- 
ered their colours and sheathed their swords. The spirit in 
which they had surrendered, as well as the spirit with which 
they fought, entitled them to respect, honourable considera- 
tion, and the frank confidence of their adversaries, and the 
generosity of the colossal power to which they had been 
forced to capitulate. These were no new sentiments of his. 
A few days after the assault on Fredericksburg, December, 
1862, at a public entertainment in the city of New York, he 
proposed ' The heroism of both parties — united they could 
whip the world/ TV T hat he had said and done during the 
war, the same was he now prepared to repeat, should another 
rebellion be set on foot, and the Republic be declared hi 
danger. But the war over, he, for one, would not have 
planted thorns in the graves where the olive had taken root. 
Here, at all events, here among the great mountains of the 
New "World, no echoes should be awakened save those that 
proclaimed truthful and glorious peace, the everlasting 
brotherhood of those who had been foes upon the battle- 
field, the triumphant reign of industry, and another pillar and 
crown of gold to the nation that had been restored. In the 
Divine sacrament of forgiveness, love, and patriotism, let 
them dedicate, with an irrevocable pledge, that beautiful and 
suberb domain of theirs, to the growth of a stalwart Demo- 
cracy, the consolidation of liberty with law, the vindica- 
tion of the Eepublic against the malevolence of faction, 
nationality against sectionalism, an enlightened civiliza- 



HIS WIFE. 



107 



tion, religion without puritanism, and loyalty without 
humiliation. 5 ' 

And thus it was that Meagher talked to the people of 
Montana with all his ardent fiery eloquence, in public halls, 
and conventions, and through the columns of every available 
newspaper, just as he talked in Ireland " twenty golden 
years ago," when he had a "cause" to advocate which gave 
force and action to every fibre of his heart and brain. There 
was really no " cause " in Montana except the assertion of 
manhood in opposition to political intrigue, and we may be 
sure that in Meagher's hands that ^ause was well taken care 
of. 

For a long time before the close of his career General 
Meagher contemplated resigning his official position. He 
began to weary of the unproductive labours of public office, 
and in sooth he had good reason ; for his services and sacri- 
fices, though graciously acknowledged, were not abundantly 
repaid. With what exuberant joyousness he wrote to me 
announcing the arrival of his wife at Fort Benton — although 
with a weary journey over the plains still before her — when 
she was on her way to rejoin him in his new home beyond 
the Rocky Mountains ; and what a new life he pictured for 
himself in the future, when, as he said, strengthened by her 
presence, the burden of his public duties would be lightened, 
while they continued, and the prospect of carving out a for- 
tune for himself, which was just opening up, would be all 
the brighter because she was there to cheer and encourage 
him ! But Fate had willed a different termination to his 
aew hopes and prospects. While still in harness, before his 
resignation could be accepted, the Indian troubles, and the 
necessity of raising and arming militia to protect the settlers, 
compelled him to undertake the arduous duty which led to 
his death. He had travelled thirty miles in the saddle, 
under a scorching July sun, after superintending the arrival 
of arms and munitions, for the equipment of the militia. He 
reached Fort Benton in the evening of July the 1st, 1867, 
wearied out from several days' labours. There being no 
accommodation at the post, he took up his quarters in a 
state-room on board the old-battered Missouri steamer G. 
A. Thompson, which was lying at the levee, preparatory to 
making her trip down the river. Tired as he was he under- 
took to write to some friends before retiring — one of whom, 



108 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



at least, Richard O'Gorman, received the epistle addressed 
to him. The state-room was on the upper deck, and the 
guards in front of the door were broken by a previous acci- 
dent. Between nine and ten o'clock he left his room. The 
night was dark. Obscurity partially enveloped the boat. 
There was a coil of rope on the verge of the deck, over which 
he stumbled, throwing him off his balance, and while grasping 
vainly for the guard, — which was not there, — he fell into 
the dark, rushing river, then flowing towards its destination 
in the mighty Mississippi at a rate of nearly ten miles an 
hour. He struck the guard of the lower deck in his descent, 
which probably disabled him, as the men on the boat 
declared that he uttered a fearful groan before they heard 
the splash which announced the accident. Gallant swimming 
for life — and he battled bravely for it — availed nothing. 
The efforts of willing hearts and hands could bring no 
succour. His calls for aid were promptly responded to. 
For a few brief moments all was activity, on the deck and 
on the shore, and with such light as a few lanterns could 
throw upon the turgid waters, the struggling form of the 
gallant soldier, the polished orator, the fiery, ardent patriot, 
beloved by friends and honoured even by foes, was seen, and 
was swept forever from the sight of man. 

Consternation and grief followed the announcement of 
this calamity as the news spread throughout the country. 
Those who remembered Meagher in his early years, and 
watched the development of his rich and rare mind, through 
all the vicissitudes of an extraordinary and eventful life, 
recalled the words of Byron on the death of Richard Brinsley 
Sheridan : — 

" E'en as the tenderness that hour distils, 
When summer's day declines along the hills ; 
So feels the fulness of the heart and eyes. 
When all of genius that can perish — dies." 

A magnificent Requiem High Mass was celebrated at the 
Church of St. Francis Xavier, Sixteenth Street, Xew York, 
on the 14th of August, for the repose of the soul of the 
departed General, under the auspices of his brother officers 
of the Irish Brigade. On the same evening, Richard 
O'Gorman delivered a eulogy on the character of the deceased 
at Cooper Institute, in which, after detailing the circum- 



A EULOGY. 



109 



stances of Meagher's death, as above related, he closed with 
the following touching peroration : — 

" So he died. 6 Would that he had died on the battle- 
field,' I think I hear some friend say. Would that he had 
fallen there, with the flag he loved waving over him, and 
the shout of triumph ringing in his ears ; would that his 
grave were on some Irish hillside, with the green turf above 
him. No ; God knows best how, and where, and when we 
are to die. His will be done. But Meagher has bequeathed 
his memory to us, to guard it, and save it from evil tongues, 
that might not respect the majesty of death. What matter 
to him now whether men praise or blame? The whole 
world's censure could not hurt him now. But for us, the 
friends who are left behind; for you, his companions in 
arms ; for me, who was the friend of his youth, and who 
have loved him ever ; for the sake of those who are nearer 
and dearer to him, of whose grief I cannot bring myself to 
speak — of his father, his brother, of his son, on whose face 
he never looked ; for the sake, more than all, of that noble 
lady whose endearing love was the pride and blessing of his 
life ; for all this we do honour to his memory, and strive to 
weave, as it were, this poor chaplet of flowers over his grave. 
His faults lie gently on him. For he had faults, as all of 
us have. But he had virtues too, in whose light his errors 
were unseen and forgotton. In his youth he loved the land 
of his birth, and freely gave all he had to give, even his life, 
to save her and do her honour. He never forgot her. He 
never said a word that was not meant to help her and raise 
her. Some things he did say from time to time, which I 
did not agree with, that seemed to me hasty, passionate, 
unjust. When men speak much and often, they cannot 
help sometimes speaking wrong. But he said always what 
he thought ; he never uttered a word that was unmanly or 
untrue to the cause that was darling to his youth. In 
Ireland, in America, he invited no man to danger that he 
was not ready to share. Never forget this : he gave all, 
lost all, for the land of his birth. He risked all for the land 
of his adoption, was her true and loyal soldier, and in the 
end died in her service. For these things, either in Ireland 
or America, he will not soon be forgotten, and the grateful 
instinct of two people will do him justice and cherish his 
memory in the heart of hearts. If it be, as we of the 



110 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



ancient faith are taught to believe, that the highest heavens 
are joined to this earth by a mystic chain of sympathy, of 
which the links are prayers and blessings which ascend and 
descend, keeping ever the sacred commimion eternal and 
unbroken — if thus fervent prayer on earth can reach the 
throne of God, the friend of my youth can never be forgotten 
there. His battle of life is fought. His work is done ; his 
hour of repose is come, and love can utter no fonder 
aspiration than that which was chanted in the sad ceremonies 
of this morning. 6 May he rest in peace. Amen ! ' " 

There are few men in our day — but still there are a few 
— whose lives were more varied by remarkable incidents, 
more checkered, more twisted and tortured by the whirl- 
pools of fate than was that of Meagher, and yet he bore 
himself gallantly through it all. Not always prosperous in 
worldly things, yet he treated adversity with a disdainful 
pride, even at the moment when his unselfishness inspired 
him to give, while prudence might have whispered him to 
retain. But he knew little of prudence in these matters. 
Generosity mastered him always. The brilliancy of his wit, 
the love of all that was gallant and noble, 'and his detesta- 
tion of all that was ignoble in human nature, that constantly 
pervaded his social life, those who have shared his com- 
panionship will not forget. The fresh bright memory of 
these attributes will remain, with the recollection of his 
joyous laugh, the flash of his deep blue eyes, sometimes 
sparkling with merriment, oftentimes intensified by some 
jDassionate thought, and not unfrequently clouded with a 
shadow of compassionate regret, — for Meagher never heard 
of sorrow or want in one of his race, that his heart did not 
respond, no matter what the condition of his exchequer 
might be. 

To those who knew him I leave these thoughts to be 
hoarded in the corners of their memory. To the readers of 
these pages I submit the story of one in whom genius and 
gallantry combined to make a notable, a loveable, and an 
enduring character, which will not be obliterated from the 
records of future history. 



APPENDIX. 



ALTHOUGH, in the text of this volume, many of Meagher's 
most characteristic speeches, and occasional fragments from 
his writings, were necessarily interwoven to complete the 
story of his life, and give it a consecutive form, there 
remains much of what he has spoken and written that 
should be embalmed in the memory of his countrymen. 
While it would be impossible to embody in these pages all 
the splendid efforts he has left behind him, — most of which 
have already been printed from time to time, — often imper- 
fectly, — in the columns of newspapers, which are read and 
forgotten — there are yet numerous selections which should 
properly find a permanent place here. They might per- 
chance be more wisely chosen, but the intention is to repro- 
duce a few illustrations of Meagher's earlier oratorical 
efforts, when his genius illuminated the pathway upon 
which his young manhood was leading him to heroism 
and martyrdom; — illustrations, also, of his more mature 
thoughts, and his almost unaltered method of expressing 
them, when at a later period he spoke and wrote in America. 

It is proper here for the author to acknowledge the kind 
interest which many friends have taken in the progress of 
his labour, by placing manuscripts and documents at his 
disposal. To my friend John Savage, who was, perhaps, 
Meagher's closest associate in social life for many years, 
and who was his editorial colleague when the Irish News 
was established, I am indebted for some valuable material 
carefully preserved since its publication in 1849. There are 
others whose voluntary kindness should not be forgotten; 
among them Mr John McCrone of Washington, Mr John T. 
Doran of St. Louis, and Mr George Mellen of New York. 



112 



APPENDIX. 



With these prefatory remarks, the following selections 
from Meagher's speeches and writings are submitted to the 
reader. 



SPEECH ON THE TRANSPORTATION OF MITCHEL. 

1848. 

Citizens of Dublin— Since we last assembled in this 
Hall, an event has occurred which decides our fate. 

We are no longer masters of our lives. They belong to 
our country — to liberty — to vengeance. Upon the walls of 
Newgate a fettered hand has inscribed this destiny. We 
shall be the martyrs or the rulers of a revolution. 

"One, two, three — ay, hundreds shall follow me!" 
exclaimed the noble citizen who was sentenced to exile and 
immortality on the morning of the 29th of May. 

Such was his prophecy, and his children will live to say 
it has been fulfilled. 

Let no man mistrust these words. Whilst I speak them, 
I am fully sensible of the obligation they impose. It is an 
obligation from which there is no exemption but through 
infamy. 

Claiming your trust, however, I well know the feelings 
that prevail amongst you — doubt — depression — shame. 
Doubt, as to the truth of those whose advice restrained your 
daring. Depression, inspired by the loss of the ablest and 
the boldest man amongst us. Shame, excited by the ease, 
the insolence, the impunity w T ith which he was hurried in 
chains from the island to whose service he had sacrificed 
all that he had on earth — ail that made life dear, and honour- 
able, and glorious to him — his home, his genius, and his 
liberty. 

In those feelings of depression and shame I deeply share; 
and from the mistrust with which some of you, at least, may 
regard the members of the late Council, I shall not hold 
myself exempt. If they are to blame, so am I. Between 
the hearts of the people and the bayonets of the govern- 
ment, I took my stand, with the members of the Council, 
and warned back the precipitate devotion which scoffed at 
prudence as a crime. I am here to answer for that act. If 



APPENDIX. 



113 



you believe it to have been the act of a dastard, treat me 
with no delicacy — treat me vrith no respect. Vindicate your 
courage in the impeachment of the coward. The necessities 
and perils of the cause forbid the interchange of courtesies. 
Civilities are out of place in the whirl and tumult of the tempest. 

Do not fear that the forfeiture of your confidence will 
induce in me the renunciation of the cause. In the ranks — 
by the side of the poorest mechanic — I shall proudly act, 
under an}- executive you may decree. Summon the intellect 
and heroism of the democracy, from the workshop, the field, 
the garret — bind the brow of labour with the crown of 
sovereignty — place the sceptre in the rough and blistered 
hand — and, to the death, I shall be the subject and the 
soldier of the plebeian king ! 

The address of the Council to the people of Ireland — the 
address signed by William Smith O'Brien — bears witness 
to your determination. It states that thousands of Con- 
federates had pledged themselves that John Mitchel should 
not leave these shores but through their blood. TTe were 
bound to make this statement — bound in justice to you — 
bound in honour to the country. Whatever odium may flow 
from that scene of victorious defiance, in which the govern- 
ment played its part without a stammer or a check, none 
falls on you. You would have fought, had we not seized 
your hands, and bound them. 

Let no foul tongue, then, spit its sarcasms upon the 
people. They were ready for the sacrifice; and had the 
word been given, the stars would burn this night above a 
thousand crimsoned graves. The guilt is ours — let the 
sarcasm fall upon our heads. 

We told you in the Clubs, four days previous to the trial, 
the reasons that compelled us to oppose the project of a 
rescue. The concentration of 10,000 troops upon the city 
— the incomplete organization of the people — the insuffi- 
ciency of food, in case of a sustained resistance — the uncer- 
tainty as to how far the country districts were prepared to 
support us — these were the chief reasons that forced us 
into an antagonism with your generosity, your devotion, 
your intrepidity. Night after night we visited the Clubs, 
to know your sentiments, your determination — and to the 
course we instructed you to adopt, you gave, at length, a 
reluctant sanction. 

K 



114 



APPEXDIX. 



Now, I do not think it would be candid in me to conceal 
the fact, that the day subsequent to the arrest of John 
Mitchel, I gave expression to sentiments having a tendency 
quite opposite to the advice I have mentioned. At a meet- 
ing of the Grattan Club, I said that the Confederation 
ought to come to the resolution to resist by force the 
transportation of John Mitchel, and if the worst befell us, 
the ship that carried him away should sail upon a sea of 
blood. 

I said this, and I shall not now conceal it. I said this, 
and I shall not shrink from the reproach of having acted 
otherwise. 

Upon consideration, I became convinced they were senti- 
ments which, if acted upon, would associate my name with 
the ruin of the cause. I felt it my duty, therefore, to retract 
them — not to disown, but to condemn them — not to shrink 
from the responsibility which the avowal of them might 
entail, but to avert the disaster which the enforcement of 
them would insure. 

You have now heard all I have to say on that point, and 
with a conscience happy in the thought that it has concealed 
nothing, I shall exultingly look forward to an event — the 
shadow of which already encompasses us — for the vindica- 
tion of my conduct, and the attestation of my truth. 

Call me coward — call me renegade. I will accept these 
titles as the penalties which a fidelity to my convictions has 
imposed. It will be so for a short time only. To the end, 
I see the path I have been ordained to walk, and upon the 
grave which closes in that path, I can read no coward's 
epitaph. 

Bitterly, indeed, might the wife and children of our 
illustrious friend lament the loss they have sustained, if his 
example failed to excite amongst us that defiant spirit 
which, in spite of pains and penalties, will boldly soar to 
freedom, and from the dust, where it has fretted for a time, 
return in rapturous flight to the source from whence it came. 
Not till then — not till the cowardice of the country has been 
made manifest — let there be tears and mourning round that 
hearth, of which the pride and chivalry have passed away. 

I said, that in the depression which his loss inspired, I 
deeply shared. I should not have said so. I feel no 
depression. His example — his fortitude — his courage — 



APPENDIX. 



115 



forbid the feeling. All that was perishable in him — his 
flesh and blood — are in the keeping of the privileged felons 
who won his liberty with their loaded dice. But his genius, 
his truth, his heroism — to what penal settlement have these 
immortal influences been condemned I 

Oh ! to have checked the evil promptly — to have secured 
their crown and government against him and his teachings — 
to have done their treacherous business well — they should 
have read his mission and his power in the star which pre- 
sided at his birth, and have stabbed him in his cradle. 
They seized him thirty years too late — they seized him 
when his steady hand had lit the sacred fire, and the flame 
had passed from soul to soul. 

Who speaks of depression, then 1 

Banish it ! Let not the banners droop — let not the 
battalions reel — when the young chief is down ! 

You have to avenge that fall. Until that fall shall have 
been avenged, a sin blackens the soul of the nation, and 
repels from our cause the sympathies of every gallant 
people. 

For one, I am pledged to follow him. Once again they 
shall have to pack their jury-box — once again, exhibit to 
the world the frauds and mockeries — the tricks and perjuries 
— upon which then power is based. In this island, the 
English never — never, shall have rest. The work begun by 
the Xorman, never shall be completed. 

Generation transmits to generation the holy passion 
which pants for liberty — which frets against oppression. 
From the blood which drenched the scaffolds of 1798, the 
u felons " of this year have sprung. 

Should their blood flow — peace, and loyalty, and debase- 
ment may here, for a time, resume their reign — the snows 
of a winter, the flowers of a summer, may clothe the pro- 
scribed graves — but from those graves there shall hereafter 
be an armed resurrection. 

Peace, loyalty, and debasement, forsooth ! A stagnant 
society — breeding in its bosom slimy, sluggish things, which 
to the surface make their way by stealth, and there, for a 
season, creep, cringe, and glitter, in the glare of a provincial 
royalty ! Peace, loyalty, and debasement ! A mass of 
pauperism — shovelled off the land, stocked in fever-sheds 
and poor-houses, shipped to Canadian swamps — rags, and 



116 



APPENDIX. 



pestilence, and vermin ! Behold the rule of England — and 
in that rule, behold humanity dethroned, and Providence 
blasphemed ! 

To keep up this abomination, they enact their laws of 
felony. To sweep away the abomination, we must break 
through their laws. 

Should the laws fail, they will hedge in the abomination 
with their bayonets and their gibbets. These, too, shall 
give way before the torrent of fire which gathers in the 
soul of the people. The question so long debated — debated, 
years ago, on fields of blood — debated latterly in a venal 
senate, amid the jeers and yells of faction — the question, as 
to who shall be the owners of this island, must be this year 
determined. The end is at hand, and so, unite and arm ! 

A truce to cheers — to speeches — to banquets — to " im- 
portant resolutions " that resolve nothing, and " magnificent 
displays," that are little else than preposterous deceptions. 
Ascertain your resources in each locality — consolidate, 
arrange them — substitute defined action for driftless passion 
— and, in the intelligent distribution and disciplined exercise 
of your powers, let the mind of the country manifest its 
purpose, and give permanent effect to its ambition. 

In carrying out this plan, the country shall have the 
services of the leading members of the Council, and from 
this great task — the organization of the country — we shall 
not desist, until it has been thoroughly accomplished. 
When it is accomplished, the country shall resume its free- 
dom and its sovereignty. To the work, then, with high 
hope and impassioned vigour ! 

There is a black ship upon the southern sea this night. 
Far from his own, old land — far from the sea, and soil, and 
sky, which, standing here, he used to claim for you with all 
the pride of a true Irish prince — far from that circle of 
fresh, young hearts, in whose light, and joyousness, and 
warmth his own drank in each evening new life and vigour 
— far from that young wife, in whose heart the kind hand 
of Heaven has kindled a gentle heroism — sustained by which 
she looks with serenity and pride upon her widowed house, 
and in the children that girdle her with beauty, beholds but 
the inheritors of a name which, to their last breath, will 
secure to them the love, the honour, the blessing of their 
country— far from these scenes and joys, clothed and 



APPENDIX. 



117 



fettered as a felon, he is borne to an island, whereon the 
rich, and brilliant, and rapacious power of which he was the 
foe, has doomed him to a dark existence. That sentence 
must be reversed — reversed by the decree of a nation, 
arrayed in arms and in glory ! 

Till then, in the love of the country, let the wife and 
children of the illustrious exile be shielded from adversity. 

True — when he stood before the judge, and with the 
voice and bearing of a Eoman, told him, that three hundred 
were prepared to follow him — true it is, that, at that moment, 
he spoke not of his home and children — he thought only of 
his country — and, to the honour of her sons, bequeathed the 
cause for which he was condemned to suffer. But in that 
one thought, all other thoughts were embraced. Girt by 
the arms and banners of a free people, he saw his home 
secure — his wife joyous — his children prosperous and 
ennobled. 

This was the thought which forbade his heart to blench 
when he left these shores — this the thought which calls up 
to-night, as he sleeps within that prison- ship, dreams full 
of light and rapturous joy — this the thought which will 
lighten the drudgery, and reconcile his proud heart to the 
odious conditions of his exile. 

Think ! — oh, think ! of that exile— the hopes, the long- 
ings, which will grow each day more anxious and impatient ! 

Think ! — oh, think ! of how, with throbbing heart and 
kindling eye, he will look out across the waters that imprison 
him, searching in the eastern sky for the flag that will 
announce to him his liberty, and the triumph of sedition ! 

Think ! — oh, think ! of that day, when thousands and 
tens of thousands will rush down to the water's edge, as a 
distant gun proclaims his return — mark the ship as it dashes 
through the waves and nears the shore — behold him stand- 
ing there upon the deck — the same calm, intrepid, noble 
heart — his clear, quick eye runs along the shore, and fills 
with the light which flashes from the bayonets of the people 
— a moment's pause ! and then — amid the roar of cannon, 
the fluttering of a thousand flags, the pealing of the cathe- 
dral bells — the triumphant felon sets his foot once more upon 
his native soil — hailed, and blessed, and worshipped as the 
first citizen of our free and sovereign state ! 



118 



APPENDIX. 



SPEECH ON AMERICAN BENEVOLENCE — IRISH 
GRATITUDE. 

Mr Chaik^ian and Gentlemen — I almost hesitate to 
thank you for the high honour you have conferred upon me, 
in requesting me to speak to the health of the Ladies of 
America, for in doing so, you have imposed upon me a very 
serious task. This I sincerely feel. 

Not, indeed, that this toast is suggestive of no inspiring 
incidents, but that the character of this assembly is such as 
to induce the fear, that I may clash with the opinions of 
some who are present here this evening, in giving full 
expression to the feelings which the sentiment inspires. 

In this assembly, every political school has its teachers 
— every creed has its adherents — and I may safely say, that 
this banquet is the tribute of united Ireland to the repre- 
sentative of American benevolence. 

Being such, I am at once reminded of the dinner which 
took place after the battle of Saratoga, at which Gates and 
Burgoyne — the rival soldiers — sat together. 

Strange scene ! Ireland, the beaten and the bankrupt, 
entertains America, the victorious and the prosperous ! 

Stranger still ! The flag of the Victor decorates this hall 
— decorates our harbour — not, indeed, in triumph, but in 
sympathy — not to commemorate the defeat, but to predict 
the resurrection, of a fallen people ! 

One thing is certain — we are sincere upon this occasion. 
There is truth in this compliment. For the first time in her 
career, Ireland has reason to be grateful to a foreign power. 

Foreign power, sir ! Why should I designate that 
country a " foreign power," which has proved itself our 
sister country ? 

England, they sometimes say, is our sister country. We 
deny the relationship — we discard it. We claim America 
as our sister, and claiming her as such, we have assembled 
here this night. 

Should a stranger, viewing this brilliant scene, inquire of 
me, w 7 hy it is that, amid the desolation of this day — whilst 
famine is in the land — whilst the hearse plumes darken the 
summer scenery of the island — whilst death sows his harvest, 
and the earth teems not with the seeds of life, but with the 



APPENDIX. 



119 



seeds of corruption — should he inquire of me, why it is, that, 
amid this desolation, we hold high festival, hang out our 
banners, and thus carouse — I should reply, " Sir, the 
citizens of Dublin have met to pay a compliment to a plain 
citizen of America, which they would not pay — ; no, not for 
all the gold in Venice ' — to the minister of England." 

Pursuing his inquiries, should he ask, why is this ? I 
should reply, Sir, there is a country lying beneath that 
crimson canopy on which we gaze in these bright evenings 
— a country exulting in a vigorous and victorious youth — a 
country with which we are incorporated by no Union Act — 
a country from which we are separated, not by a little 
channel, but by a mighty ocean — and this distant country, 
finding that our island, after an affiliation for centuries with 
the most opulent kingdom on earth, has been plunged into 
the deepest excesses of destitution and disease — and believ- 
ing that those fine ships which, a few years since, were the 
avenging angels of freedom, and guarded its domain with a 
sword of fire, might be intrusted with a kindlier mission, and 
be the messengers of life as they had been the messengers 
of death — guided not by the principles of political economy, 
but impelled by the holiest passions of humanity — this young 
nation has come to our rescue, and thus we behold the eagle 
— which, by the banks of the Delaware, scared away the 
spoiler from its offspring — we behold this eagle speeding 
across the wave, to chase from the shores of Old Dunleary 
the vulture of the Famine. 

Sir, it is not that this is an assembly in which all religious 
sects and political schools associate — it is not that this is a 
festive occasion in which we forget our differences, and 
mingle our sympathies for a common country — it is not for 
these reasons that this assembly is so pleasing to me. 

I do not urge my opinions upon any one. I speak them 
freely, it is true, but I trust without offence. But I tell you, 
gentlemen, this assembly is pleasing to me, because it is 
instructive. 

Sir, in the presence of the American citizens, we are 
reminded by what means a nation may cease to be poor, and 
how it may become great. In the presence of the American 
citizens, Ave are taught, that a nation achieving its liberty 
acquires the power that enables it to be a benefactor to the 
distressed communities of the earth. 



120 



APPENDIX. 



If the right of taxation had not been legally disputed in 
the village of Lexington — if the Stamp Act had not been 
constitutionally repealed on the plains of Saratoga — America 
would not now possess the wealth out of which she relieves 
the indigence of Ireland. 

The toast, moreover, to which you have invited me to 
speak, dictates a noble lesson to this country. The ladies 
of America refused to wear English manufacture. The 
ladies of America refused to drink the tea that came taxed 
from England. If you honour these illustrious ladies, imitate 
their virtue, and be their rivals in heroic citizenship. 

If their example be imitated here, I think the day will 
come when the Irish flag will be hailed in the port of Boston. 
But if, in the vicissitudes to which all nations are exposed, 
danger should fall upon the great Republic, and if the choice 
be made to us to desert or befriend the land of Washington 
and Franklin, I, for one, will prefer to be grateful to the 
Samaritan, rather than be loyal to the Levite. 



SPEECH AT THE MITCHEL BANQUET IN THE 
BROADWAY THEATRE, NEW YORK, JANUARY, 
1854. 

I WAS one evening on the Ohio — an evening I shall not 
easily forget. The river had been swollen with recent rains. 
The current was passing quickly, but with the placidity 
which reminded one of the old proverb, that " smooth water 
runs deep." It was early in May. The sky was pale. 
Thin clouds, with softened outline and mingling gently with 
one another, were moving towards the north. There was 
something in the air which, if not vivifying — if not genial — 
was quieting. It was such an evening that good hearts 
might have been touched with great tenderness, if not with 
mournfulness. Not with the mournfulness which comes 
from anguish and pervades our nature as if with the faint 
pulsation of a subsiding struggle, but with that mournfulness 
which accompanies the recollection of home, and is tempered 
and sweetened, and lit up with the love of old scenes and 
faces, and the hope of seeing them once more. From the 
various incidents that were going on in the boat about me, 



APPENDIX. 



121 



and the varying features of the scene through which we 
were gliding, I turned to one object, which, far more forcibly 
than the rest, attracted my attention. It was a sycamore 
tree — a noble-looking tree — noble in its proportions, noble 
in its profusion, noble in its promise. And the birds were in 
it, on its topmost branches, striking out their light wings, 
and uttering their quick notes of joy. Oh ! with what a 
sweet trill came forth the liquid song from that waving, 
sparkling foliage ; and how confident it made the looker-on. 
that the tree from which it gushed in a hundred mingling 
streams would stand, and flourish, and put forth its beauty, 
and rejoice in the fragrant breath of the summer, and stoutly 
defy the shock of the winter for many years to come ! It 
was a dream. 1 looked downward — the roots were stripped. 
The earth had been loosened from them, and they glistened 
like bones — whitened, as they were, with the water which 
tumbled through them, and about them, and over them. 
One hold alone it seemed to have. But the sleepless element 
was busy upon that. Even whilst I looked, the mould 
slipped in flakes from the solitary stay which held the tree 
erect, And there it stood — full of vigour, full of beauty, 
full of festive life, full of promise, with the grave, perhaps a 
fathom deep, opened at its feet. The next flood — and the 
last link must give ! And down must come that lord of the 
forest, with all his honours, with all his strength, with all 
his mirth ; and the remorseless river shall toss him to the 
thick slime, and then fling him up again, tearing his tangled 
finery, and bruising and breaking his proud limbs — until, 
two thousand miles below, on some stagnant swamp, tired 
of the dead prey, the wild pursuer, chafed and foaming from 
the chase, shall cast a shapeless log ashore. " Such shall 
be the fate," I said, " of the European kings ! " It is now 
summer with them. The sunbeams gild the domes in their 
palaces. The helmets, with the crimson manes, burn along 
those white lines, within which legions, countless as those of 
Xerxes, are encamped. Prayers are going on in a pavilion on 
the field. It is the camp near Olmutz. The golden lamps, and 
cross, and vases of the votive altar, fill the air, like the branch 
of Avernus, with a yellow lustre ; and the silver trumpets, 
sounding the thanksgiving, flash their shadows on the purple 
curtains of the chapel. Elsewhere— I believe in Paris — 
bridal feasts are going on ; old cathedrals shake from vault 



122 



APPENDIX. 



to belfry with swelling organs, and surging choirs, and 
rolling drums, and clanging chimes ; and the sun, streaming 
through the painted windows, mingles its rays with the 
perfumed smoke of thuribles, and the coloured haze of 
embroidered copes and chasubles, and pennons of silk, and 
flowers fresh with luscious fragrance. Beauty is clustered 
there in snowy vesture ; and the princes and warriors of the 
cities, bearded and plumed, are harnessed for the field ; and 
there are senators, and councillors of state, and grand 
almoners, and doctors of the law, and ministers of police, 
and other functionaries, assembled there likewise, in holiday 
costume. The market places, and the public squares, and 
all the public offices, are decked out with floral wreaths, and 
painted shields and pendent flags. And there are gay 
processions through the streets ; and market choruses ; and 
barges with carved and gilded prows, and silken awnings 
fringed and tasselled richly, and all laden with revelry, 
gliding up and down the river. The sun goes down, yet 
the sky is bright — brighter than at noon. There is a broad 
avenue, walled on either side and arched with fire. There 
are fountains of fire, pillars of fire, temples of fire — " temples 
of immortality " they call them — arches of fire, pyramids of 
fire. The fable of the Phoenix is more than realized. Above 
that mass and maze of flame, an eagle, feathered with 
flames, spreads his gigantic wings, and mounts and expands, 
until tower, and dome, and obelisk are spanned. Visions of 
Arabian nights visit the earth again. The wealth and 
wonders of Nineveh are disentombed. The festival costs 
one million six hundred thousand francs. All done to order. 
It is summer with the kings. Aye ! summer with the 
kings. Bright leaves upon the tree, and life and song 
amongst them ; but death is at the root. The next flood, 
and the proud lord of the forest shall be uprooted, and the 
waters shall tear him away, and when they have stripped 
him of his finery, they shall fling him in upon the swamp to 
rot. Such shall be the fate of the European kings — 
European aristocrats — European despotisms. Who will 
lament it ? Who would avert it ? Let us see them, and 
what they have to say. They will lament it, and they 
would strive to avert it who say that " order is to be 
maintained." Ascribing, thereby, to absolutism the credit 
of preserving order, and to republicanism imputing the 



APPENDIX. 



123 



iniquity of its violation. To republicanism imputing its 
violation ! For as the word "order" with them does signify, 
in truth, the conservation of aristocratic and egotistic power, 
in like manner the word " republicanism " is used by them 
to denote the subversion of society, morality, the arts of 
peace, all the precepts of religion, all the excellences, 
proprieties, and felicities of life. Order! Republicanism! 
They use the one to expound their paradise — they use the 
other to express the confusion, darkness, and agonies of the 
abyss. " Even so," said they in the Convention, " did the 
Tarquins call the Senate of Rome an assembly of brigands. 
Even so did the vassals of Porsenna regard Sceevola as a 
madman. Thus, according to the manifestoes of Xerxes, 
did Aristides plunder the treasury of Greece. Thus did 
Octavius and Antony ordain — with their hands full of spoils 
and dyed with blood — that they alone should be deemed 
clement — alone just — alone virtuous." 

To resume — Order must be maintained ! Absolutism is 
order. Republicanism is chaos. So says the dictionary, 
published by royal approbation, at Paris and Vienna — the 
corrected edition, with a new preface, by a late prisoner at 
Ham. It is compiled from the Greek version of the Bible, 
the original being for many years in the possession of the 
devout schismatic of Russia. Order must be maintained ! 
The streets swept with lancers in white cloaks. The press 
set to work in manacles. The key of the public treasury 
given to a desperate spendthrift. The men who will not 
break their oaths must be shipped off to swamps teeming 
with pestilence. The men who will not surrender the 
charter they have sworn to defend, must be lashed together 
and shot down in bales. A swarm of spies must be let 
loose, like locusts, through the land. There must be a 
thief, with a note-book, commissioned to every house. The 
national sovereignty was not inviolable. Neither shall the 
household gods, with their traditional sanctities, love-gifts, 
and worship. Menace, terrify, paralyze the people, and, 
with a soldier at the ballot-box, call upon them to exercise 
the franchise. Legitimize infamy. Proscribe posterity. 
Pronounce that it shall be born dumb. Erect a throne on 
the suffrage of seven millions. Boast that it is erected by 
the people ; and then, to prove your magnanimous submission 
to the national will — how dutifully you respect, how pro- 



124 



APPENDIX. 



foundly you reverence, how sincerely you regard it as the 
source of all legitimate authority — declare that it shall 
speak, that it shall act no more. 

Nominate the inheritors to the throne. -Circumscribe, 
arrest, annihilate the power to which you refer your crown 
and sceptre, by willing, declaring, and enacting that the 
gorgeous furniture, title, and trappings shall be irrevocable, 
and to your furthest heirs transmissible. Do this. Do it 
boldly. Do it without pause. Do it without scruple. Do 
it without mercy for the living, without any decency for the 
dead — heedless of the past, indifferent to the future — despite 
the oath that binds you — reckless of the God who watches 
you ! Do it ! Do it with the hardened heart and the 
savage arm ! Do it ! Order must be maintained ! Order ! 
There is order in the hospital ; there is order in the poor- 
house ; there is order in the jail. Order ! There is order in 
the mine, where men, and women, and children drudge like 
cattle — where the breath of morning never comes, and the 
sun shall never shine. Order ! There is order in the vaults, 
where the dead have been stored, and the terrible silence is 
broken only by the scrambling of the vermin, or the thick 
moisture trickling down the arches on the coffin-lids and 
pavement. Order ! There is order in the desert, where no 
brown brook tumbles, and no verdure drinks the dew at 
sunset. Out upon such order. It is insensibility, decay, 
desolation. It is sterility — stagnation — death. Life is to 
be a labour — life is to be a struggle — life is to be a warfare. 
Such the necessity of man — such the ordination of Provi- 
dence. In the material world — in that world which men 
call inanimate — the operation of this law to the least 
thoughtful is ever visible. Behold the forest ! — it never 
slumbers ; each day chronicles within it a fresh growth. 
Behold the sea ! — it is in motion ever ; if it ebbs, it flows 
again, replenishing the waste from which for an interval it 
retired. And thus it is, and has been, and must be, with 
the vitality of nations — ever active, recuperative, progres- 
sive. Such the law. Where this law is in force there is 
health and beauty, and great glory, and vast advantages. 
Where the law is checked, there is decrepitude, decay, 
bitterness, imbecility, corruption. Look to Austria — look 
to America. Look to Italy — look to America. Look to 
Russia, with her territory, traditions, fanaticisms, millions. 



APPENDIX. 



125 



Place her beside America. Who will have the temerity to 
say she stands the competition ? And why ? Because the 
vitality of the one is the vitality of freedom. Because the 
vitality of the other is no more than that with which an 
enormous mechanism may be cunningly endowed. The one 
is the original soul ; the other but the temporary impulse. 
I shall not go into history to substantiate these views. 
When a nation is free, the nation is active, adventurous, 
occupied with great projects, competent to achieve great ends. 
When a nation is enslaved, she is spiritless, inert, and 
sluggish ; is stirred by no proud conception ; her strength 
enervated, she is unequal to an industrious career. The most 
prosperous days which nations have enjoyed have been those 
in which their freedom was most conspicuous. More than 
this : the consciousness of freedom endued them with a 
vigour which not only repelled but appalled their enemies. 
Prussia, when it was less than Portugal in population, 
encountered successfully the greatest of the European 
powers. Holland, with an area of a few thousand square 
miles only, and resources in proportion, bore up against the 
empire of Spain when Spain had at her command the mines 
of the New World and the chivalry of the Old. Switzer- 
land, without a colony, without an ally, without a gun upon 
the seas, stands secure in the midst of foes — a citadel of 
freedom impregnable as the Alps. Carthage reckoned more 
years than the Macedonian States , Venice had a longer 
pedigree than kingly France. 

Where, in such a condition of life, are the activities of 
the mind, the grand passions of the heart, the adventurous 
purposes of the soul ? Where, as we find them here, are 
the noble sympathies which link one nation to another— link 
them together in adversity, in victory, in affluence, in ruin, 
in martyrdom, in conquest % Where the expansive fire of 
intellect, which, fed by the sages and poets, by the sculptors 
and painters and statesmen of the old republics, mounts to 
meet the beams of the sun, and, made glorious by the con- 
tact, distributes and communicates itself to other lands — 
dispelling the shades of night, and quickening the spirits 
of those that are in captivity, and the darkness of bond- 
age ? Where, as we find it here, is the intrepid spirit 
which penetrates, reclaims, and populates the wilder- 
ness ; by which the valley is filled, and every mountain 



126 



APPENDIX, 



and hill brought low, and the crooked is made straight, 
and the rough ways made smooth; before which the 
reptile and the wild man recede ; in whose breath the golden 
grain multiplies ; where the hawk, and the sour weed, and 
the bittern have been ; at whose touch cities, wealthier than 
those the gates of which were of bronze, spring up ; at 
whose mandates fleets whiten the wilderness of ocean, bury 
the harpoon in the snows of the north ; gather the fruits 
and shells of the coral islands, outstrip in capacity and speed 
the ships of the oldest commonwealths, knock at the gates 
of the Amazon and demand admittance, through regions of 
untold wealth, to the rampart of the Andes ; threaten the 
wooden walls of Austria, and from the muzzle of their 
murderous gun rescues the forlorn worshipper of freedom ; 
and, at last, consummate the magnificent design of the 
Genoese — breaking the mystic seal which has so long shut 
out the world from that empire which, we are told, is 
fragrant with the camphor, the cedar, and the laurel — than 
which China has not been so inscrutable nor India more 
opulent, nor Athens better skilled in the gentler sciences 
and arts ? 



LECTURES IN CALIFORNIA. 

On the 24th of January, 1864, Meagher delivered the 
following splendid and learned lecture in the Music Hall at 
San Francisco : — 

" Previous to my entering on that course of lectures 
which I propose delivering in your city, a few introductory 
words may not be out of season. I am the more inclined 
to speak them, since the welcome you have given me has 
been so cordial, and the interest evinced in my regard has 
been so earnest. 

" To the coldest stranger, such words might be spoken 
with propriety and effect. Where there are more friends 
than strangers round me, the propriety of my doing so 
becomes the more obvious ; and the effect, I anticipate, will 
be to knit more closely those ties which your hospitable 
spirit has so brightly woven, and which, like golden chords 
vibrating with genial melodies in a social circle, unite us at 
this moment. 



APPENDIX. 



127 



" Of that course of events to which my presence here this 
evening may be in the main ascribed, by most people in this 
Eepublic the narrative has been read. On this account, it 
is unnecessary for me to recite it here. Besides, it is in 
great part a gloomy one, and the recital of it would be more 
likely to excite painful than pleasurable emotions. Let it 
be a sealed book, until some glowing hand, pulsating with 
a delight almost delirious, shall open it to write therein, and 
at the foot of the last page, the imperishable word of 
4 Freedom !' 

" In connection with it, however, let it suffice for me to 
say, that, with others who shared a common hope, calamity, 
and peril, I have been cast from a wreck upon these shores, 
and here, in this broad domain consecrated unto liberty with 
all the rites and sacrifices of a holy war, have I set down 
my household gods, and laid in hope the foundations of my 
future home. 

" It could not be expected that, from out of such vicissi- 
tudes ; having had to conspire against, to confront, and take 
issue with a formidable government ; having had to undergo, 
for four years, a dull, a deadening, an exhausting isolation 
from all the scenes, pursuits, and duties of society ; having 
had to beat through the waves and winds of the two great 
oceans, and, through strange climes and visions, to gain 
this upper world, and clasp old friends, and breathe the 
vivifying air once more ; it could not be expected that from 
out of such vicissitudes I could emerge in a condition any- 
wise more prosperous than that in which most men find 
themselves at last, who have been cast adrift on the sea of 
life, and been made the sport of fortune. Which being so, 
nothing remained for me but to set to work, and, so far as 
my brains could creditably serve me, to do the best. 

" Hence I made up, with what materials my experience 
had gathered, and my memory retained, and with what 
workmanship it was in my capacity to bestow upon them, a 
box of trifling wares, and brought them with me into the 
country, there to sell them to the best advantage. This is 
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 

" Hence it is that I am here this night, in the land that • 
is sown with gold; a land which in my dreams I often 
thought might have been once the site of cities like those of 
Tyre, and Nineveh, and Tarsus ; cities whose people were 



128 



APPENDIX. 



clothed in purple, and whose temples were inlaid with the 
cedar, the amethyst, and pearl ; and that, having been 
buried, and the rugged growth of centuries having covered 
them, and their remains having slept for generations in 
desolation, you were conducted here, and were busy disin- 
terring the fragments of palatial pillars, and broken sceptres, 
and the diadems of kings, and pieces of glittering armour, 
and pieces of chariots that had flashed in the sun through 
crowded streets, and cymbals that had sounded, and sacred 
fountains that had played their silver showers, and chalices 
that had shown through the dusky silence of majestic shrines 
— dreamt often that you were busy disinterring here the 
vestiges of a gorgeous creation, which a deluge of fire had 
sunk in shapeless ruin and inscrutable oblivion. 

" But even if the necessity of my disposing of these wares 
— these lectures — had been less urgent, I do not think that 
it would have been less pardonable in me to make whatever 
use which, to a just extent were possible, of the faculties I 
may possess through the goodness of Heaven, and which, 
inconsiderable as they may be, were given, as all things on 
this earth are given, to promote some useful purpose. 

" In this Republic, no man is idle. Labour is the con- 
spicuous order, instinct, passion of the day. Everywhere 
throughout this immense community; everywhere upon this 
prodigious territory, within which so many families, races, 
nationalities, under a generous system of laws, are indis- 
solubly blended — everywhere an irrepressible vitality is 
evident. 

" In the forests of Maine, where the white flakes of the 
winter cling so long to the limbs of the pine, and the snow 
so long buries the green hope of the spring, and the breath 
of the North, even when summer has come, ripples the 
brown lake and river, and chafes the red lips of the fruit, 
and saddens the song that would otherwise hail with an 
exquisite ecstasy the birth of the flowers — even there that 
quick vitality is evident. 

" In the lowlands of Louisiana, where death accumulates 
his poison at the root of the sugar-cane, and the waters of 
the Mississippi devastate, in sudden inundations, the rich 
fields for miles, and the homesteads of the farmer, and the 
gardens of the planter, and the hot sun, w T hilst it generates 
those luscious clusters of vine and foliage, deadens our whole 



APPENDIX. 



129 



being with so deep a languor — there, too, that vitality is 
evident. 

" In every quarter — no matter what the soil, no matter 
what the climate, no matter what the discouragement may 
be — a vigorous and exhaustless industry is visible. What 
it has achieved, need not be hear described. What it is yet 
destined to achieve, I shall not venture to predict. Let that 
devolve upon one of the statesmen of the commonwealth to do. 

" For me, it is enough to say, that, sharing in some 
degree this active spirit ; inhaling it, as I do, the free air 
which lifts the folds of your inviolable flag ; strengthened, 
exhilarated, stimulated by it, as I am by that consciousness 
of freedom, which touches, penetrates, gladdens, vivifies, 
endows with courage, and with a robust manhood invests, 
all those who settle here, and to citizenship aspire ; I have 
long since resolved to throw myself amongst the labourers ; 
and devoting myself to the business for which I felt myself 
best fitted, to contribute my portion to that aggregate of 
enterprises and results, which, even in her infancy, encom- 
passes this empire with so much opulence, and brings her 
out so prominently before the jealous audience of her 
contemporaries. 

" It matters little, if it matters anything, what his in- 
fluence may be — the man who idles here is regarded as an 
outcast. In other countries — in countries where a territorial 
aristocracy preponderate, and the working classes constitute 
little more than a servile power, by which the state is 
nourished, but which the state ignores ; in such-like coun- 
tries a man may wash his hands in costly kalydors, and 
from the dust and scars of labour, keep them, without 
reproof, immaculate. But here such exemptions, such con- 
ceits, such royalties, are at a discount. Here Labour is 
Nobility — here Democracy is sovereignty. 

" It is not the social aspect, but the intrinsic worth, 
which here obtains. It is not the condition of life, but the 
integrity and zeal with which life is made conducive to high 
ends, that here invite respect, win honour, command obedi- 
ence. It is the brain and not the head-piece w T hich covers 
it, that attracts and governs. It is the heart, and not the 
vest, the blouse, the flowing robe which hides it, that girdles 
itself with praises and with benedictions. It is not the 
gilding nor the drapery ; nor yet its position in the tern} le, 

I 



130 



APPENDIX. 



the salooD, the senate-house, which gather the multitude to 
the statue of the noted citizen ; kindle them into rapture as 
they gaze upon it ; and evoke, in presence of it, their 
anthems, their love, and reverence. It is the memory of 
good deeds done, clinging like a perfume to it ; the achieve- 
ments of which it is the monument ; the immortal spirit 
which speaks from the marble, and plays in subtle sunlight 
on the consecrated brow. Behold here the spirit which 
actuates the Eepublic ; which through every portion of it 
distributes an activity so healthful, so adventurous, so 
intrepid ; which into such magnitude develops its proportions; 
and, even before the}' have been matured, illuminates its 
features with so bold a beauty ! 

This activity, of which I have spcken. takes different 
shapes ; manifests itself in various ways ; in a variety of 
results makes itself more or less conspicuously known ; 
susceptible of positive interpretation ; worthy, in most 
instances, of the most creditable and joyful recognition. 

" Some men build ships, which outstrip the swiftest 
messengers of the old world ; and through the lightnings, 
and the waves, and the winds ; and from islands sparkling 
with coloured shells and fragrant with the gourd and bread- 
fruit ; or from coasts inlaid with ivory and embalmed with 
spices, but girt with deadly vapour ; or from colossal cities 
whose age is made glorious with the traditions of the past 
and the conquests of modern science ; guide their homeward 
flight to these shores — bearing in their broad bosoms 
burdens richer than the Spanish galleon or the Venetian 
argosy, in the plentitude of their prowess, ever before. 
These are the merchants of the Eepublic ! 

" Other men, axe in hand, cut their way through forests, 
where the tread of human foot never before has startled the 
reptile from his sleep amongst the thick shrubs and the dead 
and matted branches, and where unknown birds have for 
ages built their dusky nests in the depths of the impenetrable 
darkness ; and these brave men level the gaunt pillars of 
the forest, and let in upon the stagnant soil the vivifying 
light, and the sweet dews that trickle from the stars ; and 
they breast the river, from which none save the red-man 
and his wild kindred of the plain and thicket have drunk 
before ; and from crag to crag they climb, until they scare 
the eagle from the topmost peak : and from thence look 



APPENDIX. 



131 



down and out, fur and wide, into a land of promise, through 
the shadowy valleys and glittering plains of which, deep 
waters, as they roll, reflect the clouds of a milder sky, and 
the dim coast-line of which, in the haze through which they 
look, sparkles with the rising and falling waves of an ocean 
they call — the great Pacific. These are the pionqers of the 
Eepublic ! 

" Other men, again', spread their tents in pleasant places, 
where the rough work has been done before them ; the 
ground cleared ; the swamp drained ; the scrub thinned ; 
the rock uprooted ; the ponderous trunk laid low ; and there 
they feed the fresh earth with the yellow seed, and bid it 
conceive and bring forth fruit a hundred-fold ; and there they 
plant and dress the vine ; and there they set down the hive, 
and with liquid violet, and thyme, and saffron-cups, invite 
the bees to swarm ; and the green marshes, and soft slopes, 
and the shaded hills are fragrant with the breath and musical 
with the bells of gentle ramblers. Behold the simple 
children of the Eepublic ! Men like those who dwelt 
amongst the Arcadian oaks, or drank the nectar of Hymettus, 
or fed on herbs amongst the rough fleeces on the summits 
of Lycseus, or those who, near the plains of Enna, d}'ed the 
fountain with the blood of oxen, and lit their torches in 
honour of the daughter of Yesta ! 

" To those who betake themselves to the study of the 
laws and constitution of the Eepublic ; who, through 
4 patient search and vigil long,' make themselves familiar 
with the history of the country, expert in estimating its 
resources, calculating its expansive force, and predicting 
what the progress, the acquisition, the future of the common- 
wealth will be — to such men, I need not, in this place, at 
this time, allude. It is known, wherever the name of 
America has been syllabled, that such men, in goodly pro- 
fusion, have been here — that such men still exist, improve, 
and multiply. The old world, in her darkest hours, has 
been consoled, enlightened, and encouraged by them. Her 
young sons have heard their precepts, and been in- 
structed. They have heard then instigations, and in the 
struggle for the right have been incited. They have 
caught their lofty intonations, and even in defeat have 
been inspired. From their captivity and ruins, the 
children of Europe have beheld the glory of these names 



132 



APPENDIX. 



mingling with, the effulgence which mounted from the 
prosperous cities in which your great orators and statesmen 
dwelt, and though sinking under the most galling calamities 
which all that is most remorseless in human nature can 
inflict — they, through their prison bars beholding it, have 
been upheld by the sight of the growing constellation in the 
western sky ; and yet, and yet again ! their faith in the 
redemption of humanity has been sustained. A little while, 
and I may revert to them ; for their labours and their 
triumphs illustrate the theme on which, this evening, I have 
thought it fitting I should speak. 

" But there is another class of workmen in the Eepublic, 
to whom it is proper I should make an immediate reference ; 
for, without being guilty of much conceit, I may rank myself 
amongst them ; and, in speaking of them, I explain my own 
purpose and position. These are the public lecturers. 

" Chateaubriand, writing- in his Memoirs of his visit to 
America, when George Washington was President, and 
lived in Philadelphia, w in a small house with all the simplicity 
of an ancient Roman,' and where he showed the distinguished 
French nobleman 8 a key taken from the Bastile,' — Chateau- 
briand, writing about this visit of his, and mentioning these 
incidents, observes, that i strangers need not look in the 
United States for that which especially distinguishes man 
from the other beings in creation, and which constitutes his 
highest glory, and the ornament of his days. The American 
(he continues) has substituted the practical art for intellec- 
tual culture. Thrown from different causes upon a desert 
soil, agriculture and commerce have necessarily engaged his 
whole attention. Before cultivating the taste (he concludes), 
it was necessary to provide sustenance for the body ; before 
planting trees, it was necessary to cut them down, in order 
to clear the ground for tillage/ 

" Whether the accuracy of these remarks may be con- 
firmed or disputed, it is, just now, beside the question to 
inquire. In any case, I do not consider myself competent 
to determine. But whatever may have been the progress 
of America in the higher departments of intellectual culture 
— at the period to which M. de Chateaubriand refers — there 
can be no second opinion regarding the success of the 
Eepublic, in those same departments, during the last half- 
century. 



APPENDIX. 



133 



" That success lias been rapid, regular, brilliant. In a 
little time it has covered a great space. With few hands to 
rear it, the imperishable monument of the mind has ascended, 
until now the light which plays upon the summit is visible 
from the furthest shore. 

" Some great orator of the Republic might here enumerate 
the names which, in characters of ineffable splendour, are 
registered upon that shaft. It would be a theme for such a 
tongue as that which has grown cold in the clay of Marsh- 
field. In a tone not less lofty, perhaps, than that in which, 
as he stood at the base of that mighty obelisk on Bunker 
Hill, he called forth the first martyrs of the Revolution and 
placed an immortal crown on the bleeding head of each, 
might he, if breathing on the earth this day, enumerate the 
scholars, who in the varied walks of learning — profane and 
sacred eloquence, the more subtle sciences, the study of 
mechanics, in the pulpit, on the stage, searching the heavens 
for the story of the planets, or mastering the law and 
method of the winds — have conquered for the Republic a 
glory not less luminous than that which consecrates the 
torn and withered relics of her wars, plays upon the white 
wings of her commerce, and compensates her sons as they 
explore the wilderness and subjugate the wildness of nature. 

" Chateaubriand beheld the Republic, when, like the 
suckling of Alcmena, it had killed the serpents in its cradle. 
Before he died, the strong child had sprung into the noblest 
attitude and proportions. He had achieved the measure of 
the twelve labours. 

" He had not only strangled a lion, terrible as the Nemean : 
he had freed from the multiplied plagues swamps not less 
deadly than those of Lerna; he had tamed the savage 
children that swept the boundless plain — fiery, swift, and 
sanguinary as the steeds of Biomedes. In coming here — 
here to those yellow sands — he had made himself master of 
a treasure more costly than the golden fruitage of the 
Hesperides. But like another divinity of the ancient times, 
he rests in his winged chariot, now that all these victories 
have been accomplished, grasping a burning torch — it is the 
torch of liberty ! — and on his forehead wearing a resplendent 
star — the Hyperion star of Genius ! So stands the Republic 
at this day ! Citizens ! behold your country in the plenitude 
of her glory! 



134 



APPENDIX. 



" In the presence of history, I shall not assert that the 
achievements of the Republic in the fields of literature and 
science transcend those that are set down to the credit of 
older nations. On this subject I shall not offend the good 
sense of the community with any inordinate assumption. I 
shall not say that the Republic has done more through the 
cultivated intellect of her sons and daughters, than England 
has done — more than Spain has done — more than Italy has 
accomplished — more than old Germany, with her deep 
thought, her intense logic, her high-toned sympathies, and 
the prodigious resources of her language, has with such 
stately grandeur and serenity achieved. 

u These countries, all of them, have grey hairs. The 
green garlands that bind them have been the growth of 
many a prosperous summer. The pedestals on which the 
veteran monarchs stand have been the workmanship of 
generations. But the elders have listened to the youngest 
of the nations. Their hearts have been stirred with the 
fresh harmonies of the voice speaking to them from the 
shores of the New World. Then* faces have shone with 
the light which fell upon them from that column, glowing 
with great names and memories, of which we have just 
spoken. 

" There is Cooper, whose tales of the red-men, and the 
pioneers, and the soldiers of the Revolution, and the seamen 
who dashed your flag in through the rocks and breakers of the 
English coast, and cut it out again as gallantly, have been 
read as widely as the border lyrics and romances of the Laird 
of Abbotsford. There is the faithful memorialist of Rip Van 
Winkle— the kindly chronicler of the legends of the Sleepy 
Hollow — the historian of Columbus — the author of Astoria 
— whose utterances, in a common language, are as sweet 
as those of Goldsmith, and whose pictures of the Alhambra 
are glowing with the colours and sombre with the shadows 
of the adventures, the times, and architecture they per- 
petuate. There is Prescott, Bancroft, Bryant, Emerson — a 
multitudinous litany of bright names ! 

" But it is not possible to enumerate them all. The 
range of my excursion is too limited for me to light upon 
all those flowers, all those trees, all those mountains, which 
springing, blossoming, towering into the azure light, have 
diversified the face of your broad history, beautified its 



APPENDIX. 



135 



aspect, drunk the ambrosial dews, caught the resplendent 
hues, and over seas, and streams, and islands, and crowded 
cities, and colossal continents, have diffused the tints, the 
perfumes, the quickening influences of a higher, a purer, a 
more effulgent, a diviner region. 

" I am not speaking in detail ; am not speaking with the 
analytical minuteness of a botanist ; with the categorical 
consecutiveness of an appraiser. I have been impressed 
with the grand spectacle of the intellect of the country dis- 
closing itself amply, vividly, in a multiplicity of forms, in a 
profusion of beauties, in the midst of uncongenial circum- 
stances — in what might be considered a primitive, or, at all 
events, a transition state of society — in the midst of great 
solicitudes, enterprises, haste, and tumult— and I give to 
you but the shadowy outline of the great impression wrought 
upon my mind. It would take a consummate artist to fill 
up the details and impart the colours. 

" But nobly as the intellect of this country has made 
itself known in the higher ranges of art and knowledge, and 
widely diffused as the popular intelligence appears to be, 
yet, from the rugged, vehement, absorbing labours in which 
the people throughout the States are for the most part 
engaged, the observations of M. de Chateaubriand may, 
without any disparagement to the Eepublic, be still con- 
sidered, in some degree, correct and applicable. The prac- 
ticable pursuits, as they are generally termed and under- 
stood, do supersede the intellectual culture. It is no 
calumny to say so. Neither does it convey an ignominious 
imputation. The same is true of all new countries. 

" It was true of Rome, when the walls of Rome were 
walls of mud, and long after the summit of the Aventine was 
crowned with the regal castle. It was true of Athens for 
many years before her last hero sacrificed himself, to realize 
for his country the promise of the oracle, and the citizens 
were governed by leaders of their own election. It is true 
of that nation, which, in the lifetime of the youngest of us, 
has been baptized in the same waters that wash your sands, 
and which, endowed as you have been, even from the 
moment of her birth wears a golden circle, set with five 
stars upon her infant brow. 

" Before cultivating the taste it is necessary to provide 
for the sustenance of the body. c Before we plant the trees,' 



136 



APPENDIX. 



writes the great Frenchman, ' it is necessary to cut them 
clown in order to clear the ground for tillage.' When the 
strong foundations have been set, when the main walls have 
been raised, we may lift the fluted pillars of the portico, and 
crown the structure with the frescoed architrave. First 
accumulate the means ; then dispense and appropriate. The 
waggon first — then the carriage. The leather leggings first 
— then, if you like, the newest fashions. This is the law 
of progress ; this the safe instinct of nations ; this the prac- 
tical lesson of all history. Chateaubriand is right ! 

" But again, deeply as the people throughout the States 
are immersed in business — in trade, agriculture, mechanism, 
commerce — and slightly as they are enabled to addict them- 
selves to the higher occupations of the mind, there is 
amongst them a keen appetite, an intense avidity for intel- 
lectual pleasures. Hence it is you find every one in the 
railway-car or steamboat, with the newspaper, the monthly 
magazine, the cheap edition of the latest novel; hence it is 
that public speaking is so much in vogue; hence it is that 
this profession of public lecturing prevails to so great an 
extent. When the people have little or no time to read for 
themselves, they come for an hour or so to hear read out 
the notes of those who have had the time to read, and 
whose tastes addict them, as their faculties adapt them, 
specially to that pursuit. 

" It was thus, perhaps, that the S3'stem of periodical 
reviews arose. People who could not afford, so far as either 
time or money were concerned, to make themselves familiar 
with ancient, recent, or contemporaneous literature — with 
past or passing events — with the ruins of antiquity, or the 
discoveries, in various fields, which enrich the present day — 
found it feasible and profitable to hear what men, endowed 
with libraries and leisure, had to say, in a few pages, upon 
such subjects. The writer in the review collected, arranged, 
set forth in a striking light and form the principal materials, 
excellences, or defects of works, which, to be read, studied, 
analyzed by people generally, would entail great expense, 
and demand from them a larger exemption from other occu- 
pations than they might with facility afford. 

" The lecturer diners from the reviewer in this only — the 
one prints the results of his researches — the other speaks 
them out. The one communicates himself to the public 



APPENDIX. 



13? 



through the eves— the other through the ears. It would 
not be delicate, neither would it be easy for me to determine 
which of the two is the better mode of supplying informa- 
tion. Let me compromise the matter — since it is the age of 
compromises — and say, it is well for us to be in the posses- 
sion of both facilities. 

" This brings me to what may not be inappropriately 
styled the programme of my business; for I do not this 
evening enter upon any one particular subject of the series 
I propose to lecture on ; but having spoken so far respecting 
the capacity in which I here appear ; having alluded to the 
circumstances in which my visit to your city may be said, 
though somewhat remotely, to have originated, and the cir- 
cumstances of the country which have legitimatized the 
duties I have undertaken to perform ; it remains for me to 
indicate the events and personages, which, to the best of my 
knowledge and ability, I desire to illustrate, and the spirit 
in which I shall regard them. 

"It is my intention, then, to give a few lectures on the 
lives, times, and characters of the Irish orators — Grattan, 
Curran, O'Connell, Shiel, and Sheridan. 

" These lectures will not be criticisms — I do not feel 
authorised to criticise such men. Conscious that I am, by 
many degrees, the inferior of the least of them, it would be 
an indecorous presumption on my part to sit in judgment 
and pronounce upon them. Had I, in the cause of liberty, 
services like theirs to point to ; victories such as they 
achieved proudly to recount , honours such as they won to 
show ; even did I lack the ability to search and elucidate 
their nature and their genius, I might be pardoned the vain 
attempt. 

" Sincerely speaking-, then, I promise little. Each of the 
proposed lectures will be confined within the natural boun- 
daries of a simple narrative. Here and there, however, 
reflections may grow out of them, and expand beyond the 
narrow limits. Here and there, perhaps, hopes niay spring 
up, sorrows may arise, conjectures may escape, and thus 
the field may be diversified, and the atmosphere about it 
changed and coloured. 

. " But I come to speak of those whose memories are the 
inalienable inheritance of my poor country, and in the pos- 
session of which — even though she sits in desolation in 



138 



APPENDIX. 



; tattered weeds,' and though c sharp misery has worn her 
to the bones' — a radiant pride tinges her pale cheek, and 
over her aching head rays of inextinguishable glory congre- 
gate. I come to speak of those who, with the beauty, the 
intrepidity, the power of the intellect that dwelt within 
them, rescued the country of my birth from 'the obscurity 
and inanition to which the laws of evil men had doomed 
her, and which, having conquered for her intervals of 
felicity and freedom, left her with a history to which the 
coldest or the haughtiest of her sons will revert with love 
and pride, and on which the bitterest of her calumniators 
cannot meditate without respect. 

" It is well that the story of such men should be simply 
told. Their grand proportions need no cunning drapery. 
It would be worse than useless to gild the glowing marble. 
Like the statues in Evadne, each has a noble history ; and 
dead though they be, in their presence virtue grows strong, 
heroism kindles in the weakest, and the guilty stand abashed. 

u There is an old man — with stooped shoulders, long 
thin arms, the sparest figure, haggard face, lips firmly set, 
and an eye with the searching glance of an eagle — that is 
Henry Grattan ! 

4; What of him ? lie had a great cause — a great oppor- 
tunity, a great genius. The independence of Ireland — the 
cause. The embarrassment of England with her colonies — 
the opportunity. With the magnitude of both, his genius 
was commensurate. He was equal to his friends — as he 
himself said of his great rival, Harry Flood — and was more 
than equal to his foes. When he spoke, the infirmities and 
deformities of man disappeared in a blaze of glory. His 
eloquence was more than human. ' It was a combination of 
cloud, whirlwind, and flame.' Nothing could resist it — 
nothing could approach it. It conquered all or distanced all. 
Like the archangel of Raphael, it was winged as well as 
armed. His intellect was most noble. His heart was not 
less divinely moulded. Never before did so much gentleness, 
so much benigTiity, so much sweetness, so much courage, 
so much force, unite in one poor frame. The brightest 
event of Irish history, is the great event of that great man's 
life. If it is the brightest, let us refer it to his genius, his 
spirit, his ambition. His love of country was intense. 
; He never would be satisfied so long as the meanest cot- 



APPENDIX. 



139 



tager in Ireland had a link of the British chain clanking" to 
his rags/ Thus he spoke, moving the declaration of inde- 
pendence. The last time he appeared in the Irish Parliament 
was at midnight. He had come from a sick-bed. They 
gave him leave to sit whilst he addressed the House. For 
a moment — for a moment — his agony forsook him. Men 
beheld before their eyes a sublime transfiguration. 4 1 rose/ 
said he, 4 with the rising fortunes of my country — I am 
willing to die with her expiring liberties.' Had he been at 
that hour inspired with the republicanism of Wolfe Tone, 
his career and glory would have been complete." 



JOHN PHILPOT CUKRAN. 

Immediately succeeding the previous lecture Meagher 
delivered another in the same Hall, on Curran, of which the 
following is a synopsis. 

" Ruins, blossoms, sterility, vegetation, storms, silence, 
vitality, desolate repose — such the history of Ireland — such 
the character of the people by whom that history has been 
written. Of that character John Philpot Curran is the 
fullest and truest expression. His endowments were many, 
and were great. His gentleness, exquisite sensibility, deep 
mournf ulness — a mournf ulness which no festivity, no triumph, 
could ever thoroughly dispel — his noble eloquence, heroism, 
honesty — all in him were lovable and great. Then the 
circumstances in which we rind him so often, win us to him, 
and make us love him. Look at him in London, where, as 
Harry Grattan had done before him, he is eating his way to 
the bar. There he is, without a friend — 4 without one 
affectionate soul (the poor little fellow piteously ejaculated) 
in whom he could take friendly refuge from the rigours of 
his destiny.' What could one so sensitive, so miserable, so 
lonely, do ? Is not the road to fame and fortune too steep, 
too bleak, too rough, for that poor outcast child ? We shall 
see, by and by. Yet, as if he hadn't enough on his own 
account to trouble him, look how lovingly he shares the 
sorrows of the poor French doctor, who had just lost his 
wife, and was nursing a little orphan on his knee. For 
himself, he cares not that he is a beggar ! But, for that 



140 



APPEXDIX. 



poor father — for that poor sickly child — oh ! how the heart 
of the poor Irish lad beats, and how fondly he wishes he 
had something, he had plenty, he had a fortune for them ! 
6 Surety,' thus he meditates and moralizes, 4 for such a pur- 
pose it is not sinful to wish for riches.' This sensibility 
accompanies him all through life, and so does that mourn- 
fulness and dejection of spirit. He tells Grattan, one day, 
it is his wish 1 to go to Spain and borrow a beard, and turn 
monk/ Then Charles Phillips shows him to us in the 
decline of life, wandering about his beautiful grounds at 
midnight, hopeless, weaLy, and sick at heart. And then, 
again, Thomas David pictures him weighed down by grief, 
in sickness and utter desolation of spirit, weeping over the 
fate of Ireland, beside the grave of his little daughter. A 
deep tone of sadness vibrates through all his life — through 
all his words. His flowers seem to have sprung from the 
soil where the dead are sleeping. His liveliest songs come 
out from the sad foliage of the yew and cypress. 

" Yet through all, and over all, there shines the light and is 
heard the voice of a genius most divine. Here Mr Meagher 
alluded to the scenes and incidents of his birth, ascribing 
most of his grand picturesque traits to their influence. He 
was born in a town called Newmarket, in the parish of 
Clonfert, in the barony of Dahallo, in the count}' of Cork, 
in the province of Munster, in the kingdom of Ireland. 
There were babbling brooks, and moor}* uplands, and 1 large 
lonely mountains,' and ruins of castles, and ruins of chapels, 
all about where he was born ; and his mother was stored 
with grand old traditions, and legends, and wild stories — 
stories of outlaw, and hero, and saint, and rapparee, and 
fairy. No wonder, then, that through the golden atmos- 
phere of his genius, there was ever floating that pale mist, 
and that there were black and stormy clouds amongst the 
crimson, and violet, and purple masses, when the sunset 
came. But that sadness of his was lit up. ever and anon, 
with mirth and drollery. He jokes about his poverty — 
jokes about not having a shilling in his pocket — jokes about 
his seven shirts (all his wardrobe ! ) — and writes to his 
mother to say he i wants only five more to make up the 
dozen' — jokes about having 6 a family for whom he had no 
dinner, and a landlady for whom he had no rent.' That 
Irish heart ! That heart, proof against the worst disasters, 



APPENDIX. 



conflicts the most worrying', defeats the most dismaying ! 
Which, not only, as Whiteside says, carries our people over 
fields of peril, and sustains them in their poverty and perse- 
cution, but sweetens the cup of misery they have, from father 
to son, been doomed to drink. The lecturer then gave a 
minute and a most amusing description of the famous 
' Monks of the Screw' — a convivial club (composed of the best 
and noblest spirits of the time), of which John Philpot 
Curran was the worthy Prior. At the table of the Monastery, 
in Kevin Street, in the city of Dublin, he showed the 
assembled brotherhood c in their skull - caps, drab cloth 
gowns, hempen girdles, and the blessed spoon and cork- 
screw dangling by their sides. 3 Dean Kirwan, Chief Justice 
Burke, Hutchinson (Provost of the University of Dublin), 
Henry Grattan, Lord Avonmore (Chief Baron of the Ex- 
chequer), and many more of the brightest and loftiest 
intellects of the period, belonged to the grotesque and jovial 
order. But Curran was the master spirit. They did right 
to consecrate him Abbot of the order and ruler of the feast. 
His profuse, exuberant, exhaustless wit qualified him for 
the post. Of that wit the whole world has heard. Every 
one, in fact, has a specimen of it, and wears it in a locket, as 
it were, of Wicklow gold set in Irish diamonds, as a charm 
against the heartache and the ' blue devils/ though their 
name were ; legion.' Mr Meagher, however, repeated a 
number of the humorsome sayings of Curran, and several 
humorsome anecdotes told of the great orator, saying in 
reference to him and his rich, racy wit, 4 that the darkest 
river will ripple and laugh, and sparkle sometimes — ay ! 
even when it is nearing the fathomless solitude in which it 
disappears for ever ! ' But Curran had something more 
than wit ; something more than genius ; something more 
than a genial, generous, loving nature. He had an uncon- 
querable, defiant courage. For the crown, the bench, the 
castle, the yeomanry — for all the auxiliaries and appliances 
of the tyranny of the day — he had a spirit that could con- 
front, repel, and defy. For the wealthiest, boldest, most 
desperate criminal of them, he had a blow which made them 
reel, and the mark of which they bore with them to the 
grave. 

" The lecturer here entered into a most graphic and 
effective picture of the times — those that immediately sue- 



142 



APPENDIX. 



ceeded 1798, c Dublin (said Mr Meagher) under Cornwallis, 
suppressing an insurrection, was a sight more terrible than 
Paris, under Robespierre, completing a revolution.' Curran's 
conduct and bearing, all through these terrible times, was 
most noble. Lord Clarendon hinted to him that he might 
lose his silk gown (which he wore as one of the king's 
counsel) for daring to appear in defence of the 4 United 
Irishmen.' c Well,' replied Curran, c His Majesty may take 
the silk, but he will have to leave the stuff behind.' Ireland 
should never forget Curran. He was true to her to the 
last. The night the Irish Parliament was dissolved, he 
was standing, wrapped up in a large cloak, close to one of 
the great pillars of the portico. One of the United Irishmen 
was passing near him ; Curran seized him by the arm, and 
looking him wildly and fiercely in the face, asked him, 
6 Where are now your 300,000 armed men \ ' The echo 
of the voice has not yet died in Ireland ! " 



CATHOLICISM AND REPUBLICANISM. 

UPON the question of the compatibility of the Roman 
Catholic faith with the principles of Republicanism, Meagher 
took occasion to express his views in a lecture delivered in 
San Francisco in 185-1, during the course which he had then 
entered upon. 

On this occasion he said : — 

" There are some men not to be argued with. For 
there are some men who cashier honesty as a folly, and 
addict themselves incorrigibly to the subtleties of logic and 
the ambiguities of language. They speak of c religion,' 
when in their inmost hearts they mean ' despotism.' They 
speak of ' insubordination,' ' turbulence,' 4 licentiousness,' — 
when it is the sagacious spirit of liberty which interrogates 
them, disputes then* position, and advances to dislodge 
them. They speak of 4 Atheism,' when it is the 4 Truth ' 
operating through the intellect which confronts them, and 
the awakened. dupes cry aloud that the}?- see no sanctity in 
servitude, no virtue without manhood, no humanity without 
intelligence, no worship of living creatures without a con- 
viction of their worth. With such men I shall not argue ; 



APPENDIX. 



143 



with such men argument is impracticable ; with such men, 
the world over, it is their nature obstinately to reject the 
Eight, as it is their interest cunningly to coalesce with and 
conspicuously represent the Wrong. They move in another 
orbit. Then motion for all time is determined — their destiny 
immutable. Farewell to Lucifer ! But there are some few 
honest men who will say, that 6 religion ' with 4 republican- 
ism \ is incompatible. With them I desire to speak. The 
rectitude of then hearts will reject the sophistry of the 
schools. Over their cherished prejudices their honest intelli- 
gence will predominate. Once stationed in presence of the 
truth, they will recognise it with gladness, and publish it with- 
out trepidation. And who are these honest men who say that 
4 religion ' with 4 republicanism ' is incompatible ? For the 
most part, they come from the country in which I had my 
birth; they profess the religious faith I myself profess. 
They are Irishmen and they are Roman Catholics. Their 
doctrine of incompatibility — the incompatibility of religion 
with republicanism or republicanism with religion — applies 
for the time being exclusively to Europe — applies to Italy, 
Germany, Sicily, France. From any application to this 
country it is scrupulously — and I believe, in the majority of 
instances, it is heartily — excluded. 

" As to Ireland, I know not if the proposition to which I 
allude has any peremptory reference. If not, it is well. If 
otherwise — if the 4 authorities ' upon such matters do not 
design republicanism for Ireland, but contemplate some 
shapeless scheme of independence — some scheme which shall 
disturb and not remodel — shall be nothing more than a 
vague expression of restless aspirations — shall be nothing 
more than a waste and demolition — active with nothing but 
disorder, and defined only so far as ruin can be accounted a 
definition. If so, permit me in refutation of this difficulty 
on the score of religion, to plead for republicanism in 
Ireland. In a word, let me include my country in the 
sisterhood of Europe, and, pleading for one, let me plead 
for all. In doing so, it will be borne in mind, that when I 
speak of 4 religion ' I refer specially to Roman Catholicity — 
for it has been in the name of Roman Catholicity alone that 
objections, on the score of religion, to the republicanism of 
Europe has been urged. What then are these objections ? 
Is religion safe only under the shadow of the bayonets ? 



APPENDIX. 



Is the mitre unsafe without the crown above it ? Is the 
cross in danger unless the gibbet of the malefactor looms 
beside it ? Must the cathedral have a camp, and the 
crozier be crossed or quartered with the sword? Is this the 
doctrine ? This what the Bible tells us ? This what his- 
tory teaches — what faith inspires ? Is the caricature of the 
Duke of York (Commander-in-Chief and Bishop Osnaburg) 
an original by one of the oldest masters ? Is religion to be 
a mere master of the ceremonies to the military ball ? 
Dependent on the providence of a Prince — in peril when the 
people are supreme — guaranteed only when a vagabond 
leaps upon the evacuated throne ? Such was not the teach- 
ing — such was not the experience of the first expounders of 
the Gospel. The Captain of the Temple and the Sadducees, 
and Gamaliel, and the Doctors of the Law were against 
them ; yet it came to pass that man}' heard, and thousands 
were converted, though Herod sat upon a throne in royal 
apparel and made an oration to them. Is the patronage of 
the sceptre required? Such was not the teaching — such 
was not the experience of the children of the Fishermen. 
They were driven to the dwellings of the dead — underneath 
the palaces of the emperors — driven where the funeral 
torches were quenched in vapour. But there was one 
torch which could not be extinguished — it was lit when the 
sun darkened over Calvary ! The circus flowed with blood, 
but the immortal spirit walked the red surge and foam, and 
led the sinking to eternal rest. Is, then, the patronage of 
the sceptre required? Such was not the teaching — such 
was not the experience of our heroic fathers. They were 
hunted as the wild fox was hunted. The cave was their 
cathedral. The crucifix on the rude chief ever admonished 
them of the penalty which awaited them. But the seed 
took root amongst the stones and thorns — ' it sprung beneath 
the axe and blossomed in the blast/ Is, then, the patronage 
of the sceptre needed ? Essential, is it, to the stability of 
the Church against which, it was promised, the gates of 
Hell should not prevail ? But it is well to have the Church 
and State incorporated ! Is this the proposition ? If so, we 
protest against any such identification. We forbid the 
banns. We do so out of our reverence for religion — we do 
so from our jealous watchfulness of freedom. I speak in 
the full spirit of the Constitution to which, upon the Gospel, 



APPENDIX. 



145 



I have pledged irrevocably my allegiance ; which Constitu- 
tion, in the first article of Amendments, declares that 
4 Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of 
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' I speak 
in the broad spirit of the Signers of the Declaration, and in 
concurrence with the expressed sentiments of the Roman 
Catholic, Carroll, of Carrollton. A friend of mine, Mr 
Samuel Pierce, of Troy, in the State of New York, sent me, 
a few days previous to my leaving for this city, the copy of 
a letter written in 1827, by this memorable patriot. The 
letter is addressed to the Rev. John Stanford, Chaplain of 
the Humane and Criminal Institutions in the city of New 
York. It is as follows :— 

" 'Donghoragen, Oct. 9th, 1827. 

" 4 Reverend and Dear Sir,— 

" 4 1 was yesterday favoured with your friendly letter of 
the 10th past, and the discourses on the opening of the 
House of Refuge, and on the death of Jefferson and Adams. 
The former I have not yet read. With the latter I am 
highly pleased, and 1 sincerely thank you for your pious 
wishes for my happiness in the life to come. 

" ' Your sentiments on religious liberty coincide entirely 
with mine. To obtain religious as well as civil liberty, I 
entered zealously into the revolution, and observing the 
Christian religion divided into many sects, I founded the 
hope that no one would be so predominant as to become the 
religion of the State. That hope was thus early entertained, 
because all of them joined in the same cause with few 
exceptions of individuals. God grant that this religious 
liberty may be preserved in these States to the end of time, 
and that all believing in the religion of Christ may practise 
the leading principle of Charity, the basis of every virtue. 

" 6 1 remain, with great respect, Reverend Sir, your most 
humble servant, 

" 4 Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, 

" ' In the 91st year of his age.' 

" Glorious old man ! Even to the setting of the sun, 
faithful to the principles which gave splendour to the 

K 



APPENDIX. 



morning of his life. Closing that letter, and having noted 
down the number of his days, well might he have exclaimed, 
' I have been faithful to the lessons of my youth, and in my 
old age have not departed from them/ In the full spirit, 
then, of your noble Constitution, and in hearty concurrence 
with the words I have now quoted, I set my face against 
an alliance of Church and State — here and elsewhere — now 
and for all time. I protest against it for Belgium, if Belgium 
so wills it. I protest against it for Ireland, if Ireland so 
wills it. I protest against it for Eome, if Rome so wills it. 
Is this to be an infidel ? To maintain for these countries 
that religion is best served when disencumbered by tem- 
poralities and unconnected with the State — is this to claim 
for these countries an exemption from the practices taught, 
the duties and responsibilities imposed by the testament of 
Christ? If this doctrine of the voluutary system — of 
thorough disconnection of Church from State, and State 
from Church — be good and orthodox in Ireland, why not in 
France? If good and orthodox in America, why not in 
Italy? — why not in Rome? I speak it plainly, so that 
there may be no mistake about it. I am opposed to the 
exercise in political affairs of any and every clerical influence 
whatsoever ; and to the eradication of that influence when- 
ever it does operate in the secular organization of this or 
any other commonwealth, I would heartily contribute my 
strongest efforts. Speaking in this spirit — eager as I am to 
see these good principles carried out to their fullest extent, 
and in every instance — eager to see religion disencumbered 
of its temporalities and politics (by which I mean the 
science and practice of Government) relieved from ecclesias- 
tical control — speaking in this spirit, I raise my voice for 
the Republicanism of Rome. If the majority of the Roman 
citizens declare for a Republic, I pronounce emphatically for 
the deposition of the temporal power of the Pope. Let the 
Forum be rebuilt — let the Senate and the Roman people 
resume their ancient rule ! Let the city of the Gracchi put 
on once more the civic crown! Who upbraids me with 
apostasy in thus inciting exclamation in the war of freedom? 
Who ejaculates 'it is unholy?' Does it involve a recanta- 
tion of the faith in which I was baptized? Involve a 
repudiation of the teachings of the Fathers? Denial of 
the Sacraments? Irreverence of the Ceremonies? Infi- 



APPENDIX. 



U7 



delity— Irnpiety — Apostasy? What is it? If it be a 
crime, let us have a definition — if it be a crime, let us have 
an exposition of it — the law, the logic, and the evidence. 
If it be a crime, I am guilty through excess of ignorance — 
for neither in creed, nor gospel, nor the Fathers, have I 
discovered the verse, chapter, note, article, or passage, 
which forbids me, as a Roman Catholic, to claim for Rome 
what it is lawful and highly righteous and creditable in me 
to claim for Sicily, for Sydney, for Mexico, or Moscow. 
Here, in this instance and at this day, I stand prepared to 
resist the temporal power of the Pope as strongly as it is 
more than probable I would have done had I lived in the 
days of Adrian the Fourth, when, according to Augustine 
Thierry and others, his Holiness commissioned the Planta- 
genet to ' enter the kingdom of Ireland, and there procure 
payment to the blessed Apostle Peter, of the annual tribute 
of one penny for each house.' Yes ! I raise my voice for 
the freedom of Rome — for its disenthrallment from that 
executive and policy which all intelligent and honest men 
concur in stigmatizing as most ruinous — ruinous to the 
activity, the morality, the manhood, the attitude of the 
people — and the most powerful repudiation of which is to be 
found in these wise and beneficent reforms which Pius the 
Ninth, on his accession to the Pontifical throne, deemed it 
salutary and expedient to introduce. Yes ! I raise my voice 
for the freedom of Rome — for its resurrection from that 
decrepitude, that debasement, that ignominous inactivity, 
that debilitating repose, in which the noble city is held 
down by those fratricides of France, who with 6 Liberty, 
Equality, and Fraternity ' on their Tri-colour, slew that 
younger brother of Republicanism, the smoke from whose 
altar was just ascending. Yes ! I raise my voice for the 
freedom of Rome — for its inauguration amongst those for- 
tunate communities of the earth, which, proceeding upon the 
simple precepts of republicanism, exhibit upon the broadest 
scale the capacities with which our being is endowed, and 
!j without any of the pageantry or mysticism which encircle 
royal estates, contribute, by their marvellous achievements 
in civilization, industrial art, and commerce, to the splendour 
of history and the happiness of humanity." 



148 



APPENDIX. 



EXTRACTS FROM 

HOLIDAYS IN COSTA RICA. 

BY THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 
[From Harper's Magazine.] 



ENTRANCE TO COSTA RICA. 

The principal entrance at present into Costa Rica is from the 
Pacific, at Punta Arenas, in the Gulf of Nicoya. The 
Columbus, a deliberate old barque through which a screw 
has been thrust, brought us, early in March, 1858, from 
Panama to Punta Arenas in less than three days. 

The trip was delightful. The coast range of Veragiia, 
the northernmost province of New Granada, was within 
sight — often within stone's-throw — the whole of the way. 
There were the mountains of the promontory of Azuero, 
glowing through the blue haze all day long. There were 
the rocks of Los Frailes — gray rocks belted with sparkling 
breakers, in and out, and wide over the spray of which 
thousands of sea-birds sported — flashing in the sunset. 
There were the stars when the sun was gone — the white beach 
gleaming beyond the line of purpled waters — and here and 
there the fire of some lone hut in the forest high above the 
coast. At all times the sea was smooth — smooth as a lake 
in summer in the midst of warm wooded hills — and at noon 
it was wondrously beautiful and luminous ; so luminous 
that, looking down into its depths, one might have been 
wooed to fancy it had a floor of diamonds, and that the pink 
and yellow sea-flowers, loosened and floating upwards from 
it, bubbling as they rose, were made of the finest gold. 

As for the company on board, ever so many nationalities, 
professions, phases of life and destinies, were comprehended 
in it. St George had his champion in Mr Perry — an affable, 
intelligent, high-spirited young Englishman, who had just 
been gazetted to the British Vice-Consulate at Realejo, 
Nicaragua, and was on his way to Guatemala to receive his 
instructions from Mr Wyke, the Consul-General. The 



APPENDIX. 



149 



Eagles of Napoleon were sentinelled by a vehement French- 
man — a short, hardy, why, flexible, swarthy fellow, in 
nankeen trowsers, glazed pnmps, and Panama hat — who 
kept perpetually gliding up and down the deck, emphasizing 
his opinions on music, politics, and commerce to a lanky 
German with a pale mustache, who, as though he were 
condemned to it, limped the planks beside him. 

This Frenchman was singularly active, adventurous, 
daring. He began life as a fisherman. From his cradle on 
one of the terraces of Brest, he was cast adrift into the fogs 
of Newfoundland, and there blossomed into manhood on 
grog and codfish. Slipping away from the Banks, he took 
to the world at large. He had been eve^where — been to 
the Antipodes — been to the Poles. With frogs and croco- 
diles, snake-charmers and ballet-girls, icebergs and palm- 
groves, he was equally familiar. Five years ago he found 
himself in the town of David, in the province of Veragua, 
two hundred miles above Panama ; and there, falling in love 
with a radiant Indian girl, whom he married at sight, con- 
cluded to settle. Since then it has fared well with him. 

His was, in truth, a golden wedding. It brought him 
herds, plantations, ships, vast plains and forests. Some 
will have it that he is in secret possession of certain gold 
mines — a veritable El Dorado — in the mountains of the 
Isthmus. The day previous to our leaving it he arrived in 
Panama, fresh and lithe, after a ride from David of eighteen 
days through the wildest region. Raging rivers, too deep 
to ford, oftentimes broke his path. Into these, his clothes 
bundled up in a turban on his head, he had to plunge, and, 
battling across them, take his mule in tow. He was bound 
for San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, as we ourselves 
were. 

Venezuela was somewhat disparagingly represented by a 
tough and squalid merchant doing business in Panama. 
Importing silk-stuffs and wines, sardines and prunes, he is 
largely concerned in the pearl-fisheries of the Isla del Rey, 
and the other islands off the coast. His heart is as close as 
an oyster, and his face as expressionless and coarse as the 
shell. Guatemala was more fortunate. Senor Larraonda 
appeared for her. His figure and complexion do injustice to 
his liberality and graciousness. He is a tall, parched, sallow- 
faced gentleman, with a patch of grey whisker under each 



150 



APPENDIX. 



ear, and the fingers of a skeleton ; but those fingers have 
clutched many a broad doubloon. A sugar-planter on the 
princeliest scale, his estate has yielded him $200,000 every 
season for the last four years. 

Close to the wheel-house, immediately after breakfast 
every morning, two priests invariably took their seats. 
Both were from Spain. The one was a Catalonian, the 
other an Aragonese. The Catalonian was a Capuchin. The 
Aragonese was a Jesuit. The Jesuit was the more remark- 
able of the two. 

He had a freckled face, a blood-shot eye, red beard and 
whiskers, a faded velvet skull-cap, threadbare souiaine, and 
plain steel buckles in his sprawling shoes. But underneath 
that threadbare gown we are told there throbbed a zealous 
heart. Underneath that faded velvet skull-cap there glowed 
a fertile brain. The Jesuit was learned, eloquent, and pious. 
A profound Divine, a commanding Orator, an adventurous 
Soldier of the Cross, he, too, had seen most of the world. 
He had been to China, the Philippine Islands, Paraguay, 
Brazil. There was more than one on board whom his 
history had reached. His labours, his sacred rhetoric, his 
heroism in all those lands, had made him famous. 

The morning of the third day out from Panama, the Gulf 
of Nicoya opened to admit us. Away to the left, Cape 
Blanco, the eastern pier of this great gate-way, glimmered 
through the mist. Away to the right, the volcano of Her- 
radura, with the brown, island of Cano sleeping in its 
shadow, stood as a watch-tower at the entrance. Farther 
up the Gulf, as the mist thinned off, the loftier mountains 
came forth and shone above the waters. There was the 
dome of San Pablo, with masses of white cloud resting on 
it. There was the peak of the Aguacate quivering in the 
sun. Beyond, and high above them all, were the mountains 
of Dota, blending — as though they were vapours only — with 
the deepening glory of the sky. All along the opposite 
shore, clusters of little islands — the Nigrites, San Lucas, 
and Pan Sucre — scrubby, barren islands, the roots of which 
are rich in pearls — one by one peeped out and twinkled. 
In the mean while the breeze freshened and grew warm ; 
and the sea, broken into little hillocks, lisped and throbbed 
around us. At noon it was thronged and bustling. We 
were at our destination. ****** 



APPENDIX. 



151 



THE FOFwESTS. 

The evening of the day following our arrival from Panama 
we set out for the mountains. An hour of brisk galloping 
along the beach which connects the town of Punta Arenas 
with the main land, brought us to Chacarita, an outpost of 
the Custom-house at the Garita. It is here that all foreign 
goods, destined for any point between the port and the 
Garita, are subjected to inspection, are weighed, and paid 
for. The outpost consists of a spacious hut, built of bamboo 
and wild sugar-cane, a banana-patch, and a poultry-yard. 
In the smoky interior of the hut, as w T e rode up to it, an 
Inspector of Customs, with a stump of a puro between his 
placid lips, serenely oscillated in his shirt-sleeves in his 
hammock of agave straw. Having satisfied him that the 
blue California blankets strapped to our saddles contained a 
change of linen only, the calm Inspector, without rising from 
his hammock, with a gentle wave of his discoloured hand, 
signified that we were at liberty to proceed. A moment 
after we were in the heart of the forest. 

Here, in all its varieties, we had the palm — the prince of 
the vegetable kingdom as Linnaeus has called it — ever waving 
those plume-like branches which recall so many scenes of 
Scriptural beauty, festivity, and triumph — so many scenes 
of hopefulness and succour in the desert and of life in the 
midst of death — and which, as many a carving and vivid 
painting on sacred walls attest, grew to be, in the red epochs 
of Christianity, the emblem of Martyrdom for the Faith. 
Here was the ceiba, or the silk-cotton tree, the shaft of 
which swells to such a girth that the largest canoes are 
hewn out of it, while Sir Amy as Leigh, the romantic 
buccaneer, likens it to a light-house, so smooth and round 
and towering is it. Myriads of singing-birds build their 
nests in it, while from the topmost branches, to w T hich they 
have climbed in search of light and air, the rose and yellow 
and red bignonias in luxuriant tresses and festoons uncoil 
themselves. Here was the matapalo, or wild fig-tree, 
spreading out its long, tender, flexible stems over the sur- 
rounding trees in quest of some temporary support, and 
having found it, and grown strong enough to sustain itself, 
turning upon and killing its protector in its serpent-like 



152 



APPENDIX. 



embraces. Here, too, were several species of the acacia, 
such as the guanacaste and saman, the delicate feathery 
foliage of which was interwoven and blended with the 
orange-blossoms and the large lanceolated leaves of the 
cincona. And then we had the parasitical cactuses in endless 
varieties, with their pink and violet and cream-coloured 
flowers, clustering the moss-covered columns of the forest, 
and flooding the golden air with the richest fragrance. A 
deep, solemn, beauteous, yet majestic forest — one of the 
vast cathedrals of Nature — one fashioned of materials, 
living, efflorescent, fruitful, imperishable — imperishable, 
since they perpetually renew themselves — to which the gold 
of the Sacramento is but as the dust of the road, and the 
marbles of Carrara are but the types of death — one down 
through the complex aisles of which, as through no stained 
window, however wonderful its magic, the light of Heaven, 
coloured with a thousand intermediate hues by day and by 
night, and for all time, with an ever-varying infinitude of 
splendour, plays — one studded with pillars, spanned with 
arches, such as neither Zwirner of Cologne nor Angelo of 
Rome, with all their genius, with all their power, with all 
the resources of which, with the patronage of kings and 
pontiffs, they were the masters, could rear, elaborate, nor 
so much as in their divinest dreams devise ! 

In the midst of all this — winding through the mazes of 
this superb labyrinth — hundreds of carts, in the months of 
February and March, move down. The noble oxen have 
their foreheads shaded with the broad shining leaves of the 
pavel. They come from Cartago, from San Jose, from the 
great plantation of Pacifica, in the valley of the Tiribi, in 
the shadow of the mountains of San Miguel— from the 
plateaux beyond the ruins of Uj arras, and overlooking the 
cataracts of the wild Berbis — descend four thousand feet 
into this forest, and so wend their way to Punt a Arenas, at 
which port — with the exception of a few bags which find 
their way to the Serapiqui, and thence to the Atlantic — the 
entire coffee crop of Costa Rica is shipped to Europe and 
the United States. 



APPENDIX. 



153 



TO SAN JOSE. 

An hour after dawn we were in our saddles, on the high 
road to San Jose once more. 

Having passed the Puente de las Damas — a bridge of 
massive masonry, spanning with a single arch, at an aching 
height, the black waters of the Jesus Maria, which here reel 
on through a chasm, from the crevices in the mighty walls 
of which the glossiest laurels and other shrubs spring forth 
in sparkling clusters — and having ambled or galloped all the 
morning through the forest, we came at last to the venta, or 
road-side inn, of San Mateo. Anselmo, our guide, was 
there before us, for we had loitered at the farm of Las 
Ramadas to have a chat with a gipsy group at breakfast 
under a magnificent guapanol, the thickly-leaved limbs of 
which on every side extended full forty feet above the 
camping-ground. 

Anselmo was a silent boy of Indian blood. His broad 
face, deeply punctured with the smallpox, was the colour of 
a ripe walnut, while the expression of it was meditative and 
morose. He wore white check trowsers, a brown scapular, 
and a pink check shirt. His bare heels displayed a pair of 
spurs the rowels of which were the size and shape of a star- 
fish. Sauntering along — equally insensible to the dust, the 
beauty, the red mud, or the straining steepness of the road 
— with one of our fowling-pieces slung behind him, and 
some few necessary articles of toilet tied up in a coffee-bag 
before him — Anselmo, dispensing with stockings, held on 
with his toes to the stirrups. The most of the way he kept 
in the rear. The pilot of the party, he sat in the stern and 
steered from behind. It is the custom of the country. The 
guide is seldom in advance — often out of sight — -never 
within hail. 

Under the dome-like mangos — under the coolest and 
darkest of them — Anselmo relieved the mules of their girths 
and cruppers, and gave them water, corn, and sacate. The 
room in which we breakfasted, floored with baked clay — 
clay done to brittle crust — was wainscoted with cedar. This 
sounds fine. But cedar is cheap in Costa Rica, and in such 
houses as the venta of San Mateo displays no polish. The 
breakfast consisted of fresh eggs, fresh bullock's tongue, a 



154 



APPENDIX. 



cup of sour coffee, a saucerful of jacotes or hog-plums, and 
the usual amount of tortillas, the ubiquitous slap-jacks of 
South and Central America. We were joined at table by an 
officer of the Costa Rican army. He was on his way from 
Nicaragua to San Jose with dispatches to his Government ; 
the San Carlos — one of the steamboats taken from the 
Filibusters, and flying the Costa Rican flag on Lake Nicar- 
agua — having thumped ashore and there stuck fast. He 
had come by the Guanacaste road, and to this point had 
been eight days in the saddle. He was a modest, intelligent, 
delicately-whiskered, mild, fair-faced gentleman. Eminently 
gallant too, for he had fought at Rivas, at Masaya, at San 
Jorge — all through the war in Nicaragua — and at its close 
had been honoured with the command of the troops on board 
the steamboat which had just been wrecked. Over his 
right shoulder was slung a broad green worsted belt. To 
this a tin canteen was hooked. Underneath the belt was 
his blue frock-coat. The coat stood in need of a good 
scouring. His sword, jingling in a steel scabbard at his 
heels, would have been all the brighter for a little sweet-oil 
and brick-dust. Having hastened with his breakfast and 
lit his puro, he mounted his white mule with the gay 
grandeur of a cavalier, gracefully lifted his drab sombrero, 
dashed through the gateway, and disappeared up the moun- 
tain. Up the mountain ! For the shadow of the Aguacate 
was upon us. High as we were amidst the mangos on the 
ridge of San Mateo, this noble mountain stood, four thousand 
feet erect, between us and the sun. 

Haughty, opulent, superb— ravines and valleys, two 
thousand feet in depth, are, to its glowing, but dim crevices 
at its foot, while the forest we have spoken of — that between 
Chacarita and the Barranca — seems no more than a quiet 
shrubbery, blossoming and sleeping in a silvered mist ! 
Haughty, opulent, superb — it is an enormous mass of gold 
and silver — "the very dust which our horses spurned with 
their hoofs,''' so John L. Stephens writes, " contains that 
treasure for which man forsakes kindred, home, and country." 
It has made the fortune of more than one bold speculator 5 
has made millionaires of such men as Espinac of Cartago, 
and Montealegre of San Jose ; still, still invites the capitalists 
of this and other countries ; and to the invincible hand of 
science knocking at its portals, and with the infallible torch, 



APPENDIX. 



155 



that has already divulged so many of the mysteries of 
nature, penetrating its recesses, promises an exhaustless 
issue of incalculable worth ! Haughty, opulent, superb — 
from base to summit it is an aggregation of most of the 
riches, the wonders, the terrors, the sweetness, and the 
glory of the earth ! 

The tropical summer and the spring of the temperate 
zone equally divide the imperial mountain, and reign there 
perpetually — the one below, the other above. Each has its 
attendant flowers, trees, birds, reptiles ; each its own wild 
offspring; each its appropriate harmonies and treasures. 
The white eagle makes it its home ; the wild coffee fills it 
with its soft exquisite perfume; the cedars crowning it 
vibrate with the merry peal of the bell-bird; monkeys in 
legions swing themselves down upon the wild cacao to 
which its warmer slopes give birth ; serpents, such as the 
sabanera, twenty and thirty feet, in length, glisten through 
the gloom of its thickets ; the sleek tiger enjoys the dumb 
security its vine-woven fastnesses afford; humming birds 
in millions — "those fragments of the rainbow," as Audubon 
has called them — flash and whirr through the foliage : while 
the King of the Vultures, with his gorgeous black and 
orange-coloured crest — an acknowledged chief among the 
greediest pirates of the dead — owns his oaken palace there, 
and soars above them all ! 

Midway up this mountain, at a point called Desmonte, 
looking suddenly back over the road we had come, there 
broke upon us a vision of indescribable peacefulness and 
grandeur. The Gulf of Nicoya — a silver chord stretched 
along the horizon — seemed to pulsate with an unheard 
melody ; while the ships we had left at Punta Arenas looked 
as though they were sea-birds clinging to it. Between the 
Gulf and the promontory of Nicoya, a white unbroken 
range of clouds extended. Beyond this range were the 
dark purple mountains of the promontory. It was the 
funeral procession overlooking the bridal train. To the 
left, the mountains, which up to this had walled in 
the road, suddenly gave way, and a vast ravine abruptly 
opened. Across the head of this ravine rose a wall of 
yellowish-brown barren hills; and beyond and far above 
them again, flinging off the white clouds which floated 
between it and the sun — the crown of glory it aspired to 



156 



APPENDIX. 



— at a height of 11.500 feet above the sea, towered the 
volcano of San Pablo ! 

This noble feature was never absent from the scene. As 
we entered the Gulf of Nicoya at the dawn of day, there it 
was, hailing us in tones of thunder, a Cyclopean warder at 
the gate. All day long, ankle-deep in blistering sand, or 
gasping in some rude veranda, we looked up to it from 
Punta Arenas — that stifled city of a burning plain — and 
we sighed for the winds and the rain that have long since 
cooled its fiery head, for it is an extinct volcano. Hardly 
Had we left the red-tiled roofs, the little orange-groves, the 
palm-trees, and sweet huertas of Esparza a mile behind, 
when, out of the midst of the morning, there came forth that 
ever-wakeful sentinel of the night, beautiful and mighty as 
when the darkness closed around him. All along the road 
to San Mateo, and far beyond it, we turned from the fences 
of erithryna, interlaced with cactus and wild pineapple, and 
the sugar-fields and pasture grounds they enclose, and from 
the several incidents and varying features of the road ; from 
ox-teams burdened with coffee, as we had seen them in the 
forest the evening previous; from spacious farm-houses with 
whitewashed walls and broad piazzas ; from loving couples 
snugly seated on the one tough saddle, the caballero holding 
the scnorita before him on the pommel, a far pleasanter 
arrangement than that prevailing in older countries when 
the pillion was in fashion ; from droves of drowsy mules, 
laden with cacao in ox-hide bags, coming up from Nicaragua, 
whisking their tails and jingling their bells as they plodded 
before their masters, whose salute, as we rode past them, 
was gracious and most winning ; from black-eyed groups at 
breakfast under some lofty carob, the black iron pot sending 
up its fragrant steam of boiling beans, the unyoked oxen 
munching the tops of sugar-canes outside the domestic 
circle, and scurvy dogs, at detached posts beyond the camp, 
showing their teeth, and snarling at the foreigners as the} 7 
rode by ; from the tall rustic cross, planted on the spot 
where some deed of blood had been done, some criminal had 
been shot, or some one had suddenly dropped dead ; from 
these, the several incidents, and these, the varying features 
of the road, many and many a time, all along to San Mateo, 
and far beyond it, we turned to gaze upon San Pablo. 
And here at this point called Desmonte — from this command- 



APPENDIX. 



157 



ing height — with this vast ravine below us, in which the Cats- 
kill might be buried, and with the intermediate range of lowlier 
mountains opening wide, so as to disclose it in its magnitude 
and the absolutism of its glory, San Pablo — the eternal 
sentinel of the Republic — overwhelmed all rivalry, and with 
a supreme sublimity usurped the conquered scene ! * * * 

INTRODUCTIONS. 

The letters of introduction we brought to the President, 
the Bishop of San Jose, the Minister of State, and other 
notable citizens of Costa Pica, obtained an unmolested 
passage for our luggage. It was on the road, miles behind 
us, jolting and smashing along in the rear of two ponderous 
bullocks ; but whenever it arrived, the Commandant at the 
Garita in the pleasantest accents assured us the formality of 
an inspection would be dispensed with* It was due to 
literature and science, he said, that the luggage of gentle- 
men devoted to the pursuit of knowledge should be exempt 
from the formalities to which Westphalian hams and such 
gross articles were subject. Moreover, it was due to the 
son of the illustrious General Paez. This he added with the 
most gallant courtesy, lifting his hat and bowing, his cavalry 
sword sliding away in the dust behind him as he did so. He 
did more. He was hospitable as he was gallant. Stepping 
into the Custom-house he brought out a bottle of cogniac, a 
tumbler, and a cork-screw. Without dismounting, we drank 
his health and prosperity to Costa Pica. Then it was his 
turn, and he drank ours, ejaculating a sentiment in honour 
of Venezuela. Two or three minutes more of pleasant gossip 
with him ; about the game in the neighbourhood of Garita, 
for he was a sporting character ; about the Filibusters, for 
he fought in Rivas, the 11th of April, 1856, and thought it 
glorious fun ; about his fighting-cocks, for he had an army 
of them; two or three minutes more of this tete-a-tete, a 
warm shake hands and the final adios, and up the road we 
started, leaving the Rio Grande hoarsely roaring in its 
jagged bed. The deep chasm — the sunset-coloured walls 
over-topping the black waters, the long procession of carts, 
and mules, and oxen, descending and winding up the oppos- 
ing cliffs, the groups of soldiers and carreteros at the bridge, 
the bridge itself, the masses of foliage and blossoms relieving 



153 



APPENDIX. 



the cold hard face of rock, and softening with their shadows 
the staring wildness of the abyss — all this was forgotten, 
when, striking the level ground above the river, a vast 
amphitheatre opened suddenly, boldly, magnificently before 
us. 

Before us were the Plains of Carmen. To the right 
were the Codilleras and the volcanic heights of Barba and 
Irazu. To the left were the mountains of Santa Anna and 
San Miguel. Breadth, loftiness, infinitude ; no paltry sign 
of human life to blot the scene'; the sun in its fulness ; the 
pulsation through the warm earth of distant waters; the 
rumblings of the thunder in a sky where not an angry speck 
was visible ; wonder, homage, ecstasies ; it seemed, indeed, 
as if we had been disenthralled from the Old World by some 
glorious magic, and were on the threshold, within sight, in 
the enjoyment of a new existence ! 

But what of that vast amphitheatre, overshadowed, and 
with these immutable sublimities environed f It was once 
the bed of an immense lake. Suddenly set free by some 
violent volcanic shock, the waters of the lake exhausted 
themselves through a rent which now forms the channel and 
outlet of the Eio Grande. Enormous rocks of calcined por- 
phyry, protruding through the soil and blackening it far and 
wide, are the testimonies of this convulsion. The Plains of 
Carmen, the lower portion of the amphitheatre, exhibit a 
loose dark loam intermixed with quantities of volcanic 
detritus. To this day they have been used as grazing grounds 
only. With a proper system of irrigation — and such a 
system, fed by the plenteous rains which fall during the 
months of June, July, August, September, and October, 
could be easily, cheaply, and extensively carried out — and 
with, of course, the necessary cultivation, they would yield 
the sugar-cane, Indian corn, tapioca, and other tropical pro- 
ductions in extraordinary abundance. Thus where we have, 
for the most part, an idle and inanimate wilderness at pre- 
sent, a population of 100,000 — in addition to the actual 
population of the country, computed at something over 
130,000 — might in this one section alone, be prosperously 
sustained. Elsewhere — all over the country, from Lake 
Nicaragua to the frontier of New Granada — whole nations, 
such as Portugal and Holland, would rind the amplest room 
and the best of living. The public unappropriated lands, in 



APPEND IX. 



159 



the northern part of the Republic alone, according to Senor 
Astaburiaga, amount to millions of acres. 

* * * * * » # 

THE CAPITAL OP COSTA EICA. 

Sun-burnecl, coated with dust, sweltering a little and 
somewhat chafed, in our red flannel shirts and overall boots, 
both the one and the other rumpled and wrinkled, decidedly 
the worse for the wear, but nevertheless in the brightest 
good-humour — returning with smiles, and sometimes with 
winks, the inquisitive glances which from door-ways and 
iron-barred windows signalled our coming — between two 
and three o'clock in the afternoon we rode into San Jose, the 
capital of the Republic of Costa Rica. 

Jogging past the Artillery Barracks — at the rickety gate 
of which there stood a sentinel in soiled linen, with sandals 
of untanned ox-hide strapped to his heels and toes — then 
past the Palace of the Government, concerning which, and 
the other notable buildings and institutions of San Jose, we 
shall say a word or two in another chapter of our Holidays 
— we dismounted at the door of the Hotel de Costa Pica. 
Ascending the staircase as leisurely and gracefully as our 
big boots and spurs would permit, we leaned over the 
banister at the first landing, and wished good-bye to 
Anselmo. At sundown that mysterious creature set out for 
Punt a Arenas, back the road which Xisus and Euryalus had 
come, with the three mules struggling behind him, the last 
being tied by the nose to the tail of the next one, and that 
one again being made fast in the same way to the other 
before him. 

Viewing it from the pretty balcony of the room into 
which we were shown by an amiable fat boy from Heidel- 
berg, whose name was Charlemagne, the capital of Costa 
Rica appeared to be a compact little city, cross-barred with 
narrow streets, roofed with red tiles. There were flag-staffs 
and belfries too, and tufts of shining green foliage breaking- 
through those red tiles — breaking through them here and 
there, and everywhere — and beyond and above them, but 
quite close to us it seemed, were the mountains of San 
Miguel — brown steeps cloven into valleys, and throwing out 
other heights, abrupt and black, in the deep shadow of 



1G0 



APPENDIX. 



which the smoke of the biimiDg forest rolled up slowly and 
with a fleecy whiteness, and all over the slopes of which the 
fields of sugar-cane fairly glittered, their verdure was so vivid. 

May Heaven be with it — the bright, young, brave city 
of the Central Andes — the silent but industrious, the modest 
but prosperous, the inoffensive but undismayed metropolis of 
the Switzerland of the tropics ! 

Radiantly reposing there, with the palm-trees fanning it 
— the mangos shadowing its little court-yards— the snow- 
w 7 hite and snow-like blossoms of the coffee-tree, the glossy, 
smooth, rich foliage of the guayaba and sweet lemon, the 
orange and banana breaking through the waste of red tiles, 
and filling the serene air with perfume — herds of cattle, the 
finest in the world, grazing in the paddocks or potreros 
without the suburbs, or with a grand docility toiling through 
its streets, carrying to the market-place the produce of the 
peasant, or to his home conveying back such accessories to 
his comfort as the ships from England, Hamburg, Guatemala, 
and France import, or such as the Panama railroad from 
more ingenious workshops, for some time past, has hurried 
up — each one at his business, none idle, none too conceited 
to trade or w r ork — an independent spirit, aiming at an inde- 
pendent livelihood, animating all — the machinery of the 
Government working steadily, and for its ordained ends, 
with a commensurate success, though not, perhaps, with the 
high pressure and expansion which Democrats of infinite 
view r s, as some of us are, might with an impetuous rhetoric 
advise — a growing desire for a closer intercourse with the 
world, dissipating its fears and prejudices, quickening its 
intelligence, ennobling its counsels, and opening out, as the 
proposed new road to the Serapiqui will do, even through 
the wilderness where no white foot until this day has been, 
new channels for the enterprise, the resources, and the credit 
of the country — the National Flag, which through the 
vanishing ranks of no despicable adversaries has been 
victoriously borne, flying from the Barracks and the Palace 
of the Government, kindling in every native heart a just 
pride and a fearless patriotism — with all this before us, how 
could we do otherwise than invoke for that brave little city 
of the Central Andes — as I do now and ever shall — the 
sympathies of the American people and the shield of 
Providence ? 



APPENDIX. 



161 



Oh ! may that Providence — typified by the vast moun- 
tain of Irazu which overshadows it, and which has long 
since quenched its fires and become a glory instead of 
a terror to the scene — protect it to the end of time ; and 
safe amidst the everlasting hills — prosperous and inviolable 
— through many an improving epoch may it teach the lesson, 
that nations may be great — great in honest industry, great 
in the goodness of domestic life, great in the less ostenta- 
tious arts of peace, great in patriotism, great in heroism, 
great in being the living illustration of this inspiring lesson 
— though no navy rides the sea for them, and their terri- 
tory be small ! 

******* 

LIFE IX SAX JOSE. 

The Police are picturesque. A little after sunset, they 
are mustered in the Plaza and told off for duty. With a 
carbine slung across the shoulder, a short brass -nil ted sword 
and cartouche-box, a torn straw hat, and an old blanket, full 
of holes, as a uniform, they patrol the silent city until day- 
break, calling the hours, whistling the alert every half-hour, 
and as their dreary vigils terminate, offering up the oracion 
del sereno — Ave Maria Purissima! — in the most dismal 
recitative. 

They are faithful creatures, however, those ragged Police- 
men of San Jose. They are dutiful, vigilant, and brave, 
though a stranger now and then may come across one of 
them snoring on the steps of a door-way, as we did occa- 
sionally in our surveys of the city by moonlight. The first 
time this occurred to us, the poor fellow was bundled up 
under the heel of an enormous boot, the original of which 
stands eight feet high in Chatham Street. The copy, at the 
corner of the Calle de la Puehla in San Jose, was furnished 
by an accomplished Filibuster to Mons. Eugenie, the French 
boot-maker, whose portentous sign it is. The artist was a 
prisoner of war. But even so, in captivity and defeat he 
proclaimed his principles. He stuck a spur with an immense 
rowel into the heel of the gigantic boot, and gave three 
cheers for General Walker and the Lone Star ! 

But there is no need of the Police — none whatever. 
Costa Eica is the most temperate and peaceful of countries, and 

L 



162 



APPENDIX. 



San Jose is the most temperate and peaceful of cities. One 
might be provoked into saying it was stupidly well-behaved 
and insipidly sensible. The cUffonnier would have little to 
do there. The lawyer from the vicinity of the Tombs would 
fare no better. The entire rascality of the exemplary place 
is not worth an affidavit. Cock-fighting is the only dissipa- 
tion the people indulge in, and that on Feasts of Obligation 
and Sundays exclusively. 

Being one of the Institutions of the country, it would 
have never done for Don Eamon and Don Francisco to have 
overlooked or shunned the Cock-pit. Martyrs to the love of 
knowledge, they visited it with the purest motives, urged by 
a curiosity as disinterested as that which might have tempted 
a perfect stranger — an ancient Briton for instance — to drop 
into the Roman amphitheatre in the days of the Thracian 
prize-fights. 

Passing a rude door- way, they came upon an elderly 
gentleman with a rusty mustache. He was sitting in a chair 
scooped out of a block of mahogany, and held in his left 
hand a pack of small printed cards, the tickets of admission 
to the rascally arena. Having paid him two rials, he drew 
aside a torn pink calico curtain, and with a gracious entren 
ustedes Seiiores, bowed, stroked his mustache, and resumed 
his collection of rials. A second after, the Martyrs found 
themselves in a windy wooden building, which seemed to 
them, for all the world, like a cow-shed that had been con- 
verted into something resembling a circus. 

It was Whitsunday. The place was crowded. All 
classes of society were represented there. The merchant and 
the peddler — colonels with blazing epaulets and half-naked 
privates — doctors, lawyers, Government clerks, fathers of 
families, genteel gentlemen with ample waistcoats and gray 
heads, youths of eighteen and less — the latter peppered with 
the spiciest pertness, and boiling all over with a maddening 
avidity for pesos and cuartas. 

The benches of the theatre rise one above another, form- 
ing a square, within which, on the moist clay floor, enclosed 
by a slight wooden barrier eighteen inches high, is the fatal 
ring, In a nook to the right of the pink calico curtain, 
stands a small table, upon which the knives, the twine for 
fastening them, the stone and oil for sharpening them, the 
fine-toothed saw for cutting the gojfs, and all the other 



APPENDIX. 



163 



exquisite odds and ends, devised for the deadly equipment of 
the gladiators, are laid out. The knives used in this 
butchery are sharp as lancets, and curved like charters. 
"While the lists are being arranged, and the armorers are 
busy lacing on the gyves and weapons of the combatants, 
and many an ounce of precious metal is risked on their 
chances of life and death, the gladiators pertinaciously keep 
crowing with all their might, and in the glossiest feather 
saucily strut about the ring as far as their hempen garters 
will permit them. 

Don Ramon and his friend remarked, the moment they 
entered, that the betting was high and brisk. Gold pieces 
changed hands with a dazzling rapidity. The Costa Eicans 
are proverbial for their economy and caution. Outside the 
Cock-pit they never spend a medio — not so much as half a 
dime — if they can help it. Inside this charmed circle, they 
are the most prodigal of spendthrifts. One sallow lad par- 
ticularly struck them. He had neither shoes nor stockings 
— not so much as a scrap of raw ox-hide to the sole of his 
foot. But had every pimple on his face been a ruby — and 
his face was a nursery of pimples — he could not have been 
more bold and lavish with his purse. It came, however, to 
a crisis with him. Stretching across Don Ramon to take 
the bet of another infatuated sportsman in broad-cloth and 
embroidered linen, he staked a fistful of gold on a red cock 
of the most seductive points and perfectly irresistible spunk. 
It was all he had in the world. There was a fluttering of 
cropped wings, a shaking of scarlet crests, a cross-fire of 
murderous glances, a sudden spring, a bitter tussel, fuss and 
feathers, a pool of blood, and the fistful of gold — all that 
the sallow-skinned pimple-faced prodigal had in the world 
— was gone ! 

A ruthless, senseless, ignoble game, it is fast going out 
of fashion. There was a time, and that not more than five 
or six years ago, when the President and the whole of his 
Cabinet were to be seen in the Cock-pit. But it is seldom, 
if ever, that a distinguished politician, much less a statesman, 
even on the eve of an election, is discovered there now. 
Neither the mind, nor the manhood, nor the heart of the 
people will suffer when it has been utterly abolished. 

The morning after our arrival, we called on the Bishop of 
San Jose. His residence is an humble one. Two workmen, 



164 



APPENDIX. 



tip-toe on ladders, were repairing" the plaster over the door- 
way just as we reached it. Stepping across a perfect 
morass of mortar, we entered the zaguan. An aged gentle- 
man softly approached us before we had time to call the 
Porter o and send in our cards. 

Tall, thin, sharp-featured, with a yellowish brown skin 
and long spare fingers, his eye was keen, his step firm, his 
voice distinct and full. He wore a pectoral gold cross and 
purple silk cassock. The latter had a waterish look. The 
purple had been diluted into pink. A velvet cap of the 
same weak colour in great measure concealed his hair, 
which was short, and flat, and seemed as though it had been 
dashed with damp white pepper. It was the venerable 
Anselmo Lorente, the Bishop of San Jose. 

A door stood open on the left of the zaguan. The Bishop 
pointed to it. He did so with a sweet smile and gracious- 
ness. Bowing to him respectfully, we passed into a dull 
saloon. 

The walls were covered with a winterish paper, and would 
have been woefully bare were it not for three paintings which 
hung from the slim cornice opposite the windows looking 
into the street. One of these paintings — a likeness of Pius 
the Ninth — was really a treasure. A superb souvenir of 
Rome, it had all the softness, the calmness, the exquisite 
minuteness of finish which characterize the works of Carlo 
Dolce. The likeness of Anselmo Lorente looked raw and 
miserable beside it. The third painting represented the 
ascension of a devout Prelate in full pontificals from the 
grave. For so glaring an outrage on canvas, it would have 
been a just chastisement had the Painter gone down while 
the Prelate went up. 

Between the two windows facing these paintings, there 
stood a table of dark mahogany. It was covered with 
faded red moreen, books, pieces of sealing-wax, quills, and 
papers. An arm-chair stood behind the table. Behind the 
arm-chair there stood a screen, and from this a canopy pro- 
jected. Arm-chair, screen, and canopy, everything was 
covered with faded red moreen. There was neither carpeting 
nor matting on the floor. The boards, however, were warmly 
coated with dust, the accumulation of months of domestic 
repose. 

Having read the letters we had handed hirn on entering, 



APPENDIX. 



165 



the Bishop rose from the sofa — a sad piece of furniture it 
was — and cordially welcomed us to San Jose. The cordiality 
of the welcome was tempered with dignity. It was the 
subdued cordiality of age. 

Just then there was a tap at the door. The Bishop was 
called out for a moment. During his absence, a monk of the 
Reformed Order of St. Francis entered the room. He was 
from Quito. Heavily clothed in a drab gown and cloak, 
drab hood and trowsers, all cut out of a wool and cotton 
mixture manufactured in the Andes of Ecuador, with his 
cropped head, a face the colour of pale butter, and a pair of 
dark-blue spectacles — behind which his large black eyes 
rolled incessantly — he was, in truth, a strange apparition. 
The Archbishop of Ecuador being dead, and the Archbishop 
of Panama being absent from that city on a visitation of his 
diocese, the pious brother of St. Francis had journeyed to 
Costa Eica to be ordained. 

The Bishop, resuming his seat on the sofa, presented his 
case of cigar ettos — it was a dainty little case made of coloured 
straw — and invited us to smoke. The holy hobgoblin from 
Quito taking the media from the table, where it lay coiled up 
in the inkstand, succeeded, after a number of failures, in 
striking a light. Whereupon he knelt and extended the 
media to the Bishop. The Bishop having lit his cigarette^ 
the good monk kissed the episcopal ring, and rising with a 
profound obeisance, solemnly extinguished the fire. Shortly 
after, having silently glared at us through his purple spec- 
tacles, he bent the knee again, kissed the episcopal ring once 
more, and with head cast down, tucking his drab gown about 
him, retreated with a confused modesty from the room. 

In the midst of fragrant clouds, Senor Lorente pleasantly 
conversed with us. He spoke about the country, its draw- 
backs, its resources and its prospects, and in a few bright 
sentences, enunciated with considerable animation, gave us 
the principal points of its political history. 

It was a deep source of regret to him that the churches of 
San Jose contained little to interest the stranger. They had 
no works of art, no paintings, no sculpture, and very few 
ornaments. The few they possessed were of the humblest 
description. The Spaniards had concentrated in Guatemala 
the entire wealth of the Central American church, and, up to 
this, Costa Eica had been too poor to enrich her altars. In 



166 



APPENDIX. 



Cartago, however, there were some old and valuable paint- 
ings, two or three fine images, shrines, reliquaries, and 
vestments of costly material and curious workmanship. 
Prom the churches, Senor Lorente passed to the Indians of 
the country. His statements and surmises relative to the 
Guatusos of the valley of Frio — a race living absolutely 
secluded and permitting no stranger whatever to set foot 
within their mysterious domain — were deeply interesting. 
Every syllable he let fall upon this subject was eagerly 
caught up. 

In the end, he referred us to the History of Guatemala 
by the Archbishop, Francisco de Paula Garcia Pelaez. 
There was a learned and profound chapter in it devoted to 
the Guatusos. We should read it. He would give us a 
copy of the work. It would be a pledge to us of his regard, 
and of his anxiety to aid us in our laudable researches. He 
was delighted to find we had been educated by the Jesuits. 
They were the nobility, the flower, the chivalry of the 
Church. Her bravest soldiers, they had been her sublimest 
martyrs. Wherever they were, there was civilization, 
erudition, eloquence, a disciplined society, an elevated faith, 
and the loftiest example of magnanimity. It would be well 
for Costa Pica were they established in the country. But 
there was an ignorant prejudice against them, and his efforts 
to obtain admission and a recognized standing for them in 
the Eepublic, had proved unavailing so far. 

As we rose to take leave, the Bishop opened tne door 
leading into the zaguan, and calling to a young student who 
was reading in the piazza of the court-yard, desired him to take 
the History of Guatemala from the library, and accompany 
us with it to the Hotel. We begged him not to trouble the 
young student. We could easily take the books ourselves. 
But the gracious good Bishop would have his own way. 
His consideration for us was relentless. And so, we re- 
turned to our quarters, followed by the History of Guate- 
mala, in three volumes, and a modest youth in a clerical 
cloak, and a brown felt hat of the California pattern. 

* $ # $ t $ * 



APPENDIX. 



167 



HOLY WEEK. 

When evening came, the procession which commemorates 
the interment of Christ, moved slowly and darkly from the 
great door-way of the Cathedral, and, descending into the 
Plaza, entered and passed through the adjoining street. 
The aceras or side-walks of these streets were planted with 
w T ild canes, round which the leaves of the palm and wreaths 
of flowers were woven, the carriage-way being strewn with 
the seimpreviva, the finer branches of the urnca, and the 
wondrous and beauteous manitas of the guarumo. Cur- 
tains of white muslin, festooned with crape or ribbons 
of black silk and satin, overhung the balconies of the 
houses along the line of the procession, and at the 
intersection of the streets were catafalques covered with 
black embroidered cloth, strewn with flowers, laden with 
fruit, and luminous with coloured lamps and cups of silver. 
The pioneers of the procession were Brothers of Charity 
— Los Hermanos de la Caridad — clothed in long white 
woollen garments, shapeless and loose as bed-gowns, with 
white or checkered cotton handkerchiefs, tied with a pig-tail 
knot, about their heads. These Brothers carried the various 
insignia of the Crucifixion. The two first balanced a pair 
of green ladders upon their shoulders. One bore a crown of 
thorns on a breakfast-tray, another a sponge in a stained 
napkin, the third an iron hammer and three nails. Then 
came a swarni of boys with extinguished candles. After 
them, three young men in ecclesiastical costume appeared, 
the one in the middle bearing a tall slender silver crucifix — 
the crucifix being shrouded in black velvet — the other two 
holding aloft the thinnest candlesticks, the yellow tapers in 
w T hich burned with an ashy flame, melting excessively as 
they feebly gleamed. Close behind the candlesticks and 
crucifix there walked four priests abreast, each one in soutaine, 
black cap and surplice. There was a black hood drawn over 
the black cap, while a black train, the dorsal development 
of the hood, streamed along the leaf-strewn pavement a 
yard or two behind. They were the heralds of a large 
black silk banner which had a red cross blazoned on it, and 
was borne erect by a sickly gentleman in deep mourning. 
Then came another swarm of boys, clearing the road for a 



168 



APPENDIX. 



full-length figure of St. John the Evangelist, which, in a 
complete suit of variegated vestments, and with the right 
hand placed upon the region of the heart, was shouldered 
along by four young gentlemen, all bare-headed and in full 
evening dress. A figure of Mary Magdalene followed that 
of the Evangelist. It was radiant with robes of white satin 
and luxuriant with tresses of black hair, and the noble 
beauty of the face was heightened by an expression of 
intense contrition. As works of art, these figures are more 
than admirable. They are exquisite and wonderful. Gaute- 
mala, where they have been wrought, has reason to be 
proud of them. 

But one, loftier far and statelier than those preceding it, 
approached. Lifted bayonets were gleaming to the right 
and left of it, thuribles were rolling up their fragrant clouds 
around it, pretty children in white frocks, and fresh as 
rosebuds, were throwing flowers in front of it all over the 
leafy pavement. It was the Mater Dolorosa. Sumptuously 
robed, the costliest lace and purple velvet, pearls of the 
largest size, opals and other precious stones, were lavished 
on it. From the queenly head there issued rays of silver 
which flashed as though they were spears of crystal. The 
black velvet train, descending from the figure, was borne by 
a priest. Behind him, carrying long wax candles, were 
many of the first ladies of the city, all dressed in black silk 
or satin, their heads concealed in rich mantillas, and these, 
too, black as funeral palls could be. Some of them were 
young, tenderly graceful, and of a pearly beauteousness. 
The matrons, though slim and parched, were dignified and 
saintly. 

All this, however, was but the prelude to the absorbing 
feature of the pageant. This was an immense sarcophagus 
of glass, upheld by some twenty of the most respectable 
citizens of San Jose, whose step had all the emphasis and 
grandeur of practised soldiers. Acolytes bearing inverted 
torches, and smoking censers, and palm-branches covered 
with crape, went before, flanked, and followed it. And as 
it was borne along, the spectators at the door-ways, in the 
balconies, at the windows, oil the side-walks, uncovered 
their heads and knelt. "Within the transparent tomb were 
folds of the finest linen — snowy folds strewn with roses — a 
face streaming with blood, a crown of thorns, and the outline 



APPENDIX. 



169 



of a prostrate image. The image was that of The Crucified 
of Calvary. As it passed, no one spoke. There was not a 
whisper even. The swelling and subsiding music of the 
military band — heading the column of troops with which, 
colours furled and arms reversed, the procession closed — '• 
alone disturbed, at that solemn moment, the peacefulness of 
San Jose. 

A few hours later there was a very different scene. It 
was the dawn of Easter Sunday. The clouds lay full and 
low upon the mountains. San Miguel was a pile of clouds. 
The dark green base of Irazu alone was visible. The 
plantations and potreros were overwhelmed with clouds. It 
was a chaos of clouds ail round. Nothing else was distin- 
guishable. Nothing — unless, indeed, the lamp at the corner 
of the Calle del Artilleria, the light from which sputtered 
through the thick smoke with which the glass was blurred. 
But in the midst of this chaos of clouds, the bells of the 
Cathedral, the Jlercedas and the Carmen, suddenly broke 
loose. Briskly, wildly, violently the}' rang out ! Again 
and again rang out ! Again and again, until the riotous air 
seemed to flash with the strokes ! Again and again, until 
the drowsy earth seemed to reel and quiver ! 

Then came the rumbling of drums, and the shrill 
chorusing of fighting-cocks, and the yelping of dogs, and 
the moaning of the cattle in the suburbs. In less than 
twenty minutes every house in San Jose was pouring out 
its inmates — pouring them out in ponchos and mantillas, in 
shawls, velvet-collared cloaks and shirt-sleeves — down upon 
the Plaza. And there — as the clouds lifted, and the moun- 
tains began to show themselves, and the sun streamed over 
the broken crest of Irazu — a startling spectacle broke upon 
the view. 

The Plaza was full of people. The spacious esplanade 
and steps of the Cathedral were thronged to overflowing. 
The balconies and windows of the houses overlooking the 
Plaza — the balconies and windows of the houses converging 
on the Plaza — all sparkled and rustled with spectators. 
Every one was excited — every one was chattering — every 
one was smoking — every one was laughing — every one was 
on tip-toe — every one was impatient, fidgety, and nervous. 
There was something in the wind ! 

High above the crowd — in the centre of the Plaza — were 



170 



APPENDIX. 



four lines of gleaming steel. The troops had formed a 
hollow square, and within this square, overtopping the lifted 
bayonets by twenty feet at least, there stood a monstrous 
gibbet. Fastened together with thongs of raw hide and 
pieces of old rope, the limbs of this gibbet were gaunt and 
ghastly enough to scare the boldest malefactor. From the 
cross-beam there dangled a foul bundle of old clothes. 
There was a red night-cap — a yellow flannel waistcoat, 
striped with black, the arms outstretched — a pair of torn 
brown breeches and musty boots, the latter crumpled at the 
toes and woefully wasted at the heels. Night-cap, boots, 
and waistcoat all were stuffed with Eoman candles, squibs, 
and crackers, while the breeches were burdened with a 
bomb -shell made of the toughest pasteboard and swollen 
with combustibles. It was the effigy of Judas Iscariot ! 
There — in the dewy dawn, with the faint soft light of the 
Easter morn playing on the night-cap, in the full strained 
view of thousands — the similacrum of the traitor dangled, 
slowly turning, half-way round at times, as a puff from the 
mountains strayed against and elbowed it ignominiously 
aside. 

The trumpet having sounded, a barefooted Corporal 
stepped from the ranks. Erect, emotionless, with cold 
solemnity he approached the gibbet, canying a long spare 
sugar-cane, at the end of which was a tuft of lighted tow. 
As he neared the gibbet, the hubbub of the multitude sub- 
sided. A profound calm set in. The boys themselves — the 
gamins of San Jose — frenzied with fun and mischief as they 
were — huddled together and held their breath a moment. 
Step by step, gravely measuring his way, the Corporal still 
kept on, until at last he came abruptly to a halt right under 
the cross-beam. The sugar-cane was lifted. It touched 
the left heel of the scoundrel overhead. In the twinkling 
of an eye, there was a terrific explosion ! The boot flew in 
shreds — flames leaped from the stomach — the bomb-shell 
burst and split the brown breeches into a shower of rags and 
soot — rockets whizzed from the ribs — the outstretched arms 
vanished from their sockets in a gust of sulphur — the red 
night-cap shot up clean out of sight, and, a few seconds 
after, plopped down in cinders over the sign-board of the 
Eestaurant, next door to the Barracks : all this in less than 
two minutes, amidst the crashing of drums, the excruciating 



APPENDIX. 



171 



screams of the boys, the crowing of cocks and the 3 r elpiug 

of dogs, the tittering of the modest signoritas and signoras, 

the gabbling of parrots, a tempestuous flight of stones, and 

the hootings, maldiciones* and uproarious merriment of soldiers 

and civilians, priests, paupers, and patricians. 

When the smoke cleared off, the back-bone was all that 

remained of the exploded ruffian. And that — being of iron 

— continued to* dangle at the end of the rope until the gibbet 

was lowered. In half an hour, the Plaza had resumed its 

decorum, loneliness, and silence. 

***** * * 

THE CITY OF CAETAGO. 

Dull and desolate as it habitually is, there are two days 
out of the seven, when Cartago wakes up. There is Sunday, 
when the Church-bells prove to distraction the metal they're 
made of, and the Senoras and Sehoritas, with their graceful 
draperies of black and coloured shawls, glide to and from 
the churches, and the militia of the District parade and drill 
all the forenoon in the Plaza, and the most reputable people, 
the Judiciary included, indulge in lotteries, vingt-un, and 
draughts, in the widest and longest room of the Hotel, 
whenever any such institution contributes to the conveniences, 
the cheap dissipation, and, as in the case of Don Carlos, to 
the ups and downs, the brandy-smashes and bankruptcies, 
the convulsions and woes of Cartago. On Sunday evenings, 
moreover, the Band of the little garrison performs in front 
of the house in which the Governor of the Province resides. 
But the Thursdays are livelier, though, in the absence of 
the Band and the Bells, a native might say they were some- 
what less musical. Thursdays are market-days in Cartago. 

The Plaza — the massive white towers of the Parochial 
Church on one side — substantial one-storied houses, with 
projecting roofs and bowed- windows, on the other — the 
Cuartel and Governor's Audience-Hall in front, all glistening 
with whitewash, and close behind them, the volcano of Irazu, 
the sun flashing from its cloven forehead, and the snowy 
clouds gathering round it, as the Sicilian flocks crowded to 
the Cyclops — these are the outlines of the picture. It is a 
vivid blending of most of the contrasts of Tropical life with 
the majesty of nature. 



172 



APPENDIX, 



The streets leading into the Plaza are thronged — . 
thronged with carts and oxen, with mules and muleteers, 
with soldiers and wandering miustrels — thronged with 
booths and beggars, and with cripples who imploringly work 
out a fortune with their distorted bones. In the Plaza we 
have innumerable articles for sale, and, pictorially viewed, 
the gayest of groups. We have rainbow- coloured silk- 
woven shawls from Guatemala, blankets, and brigand-like 
jackets with superfluous bright buttons and friDges. We 
have the cacao-nut in ox-hide bags, which barelegged 
sinewy fellows have carried up all the way from Matina, 
and drinking-cups, carved out of the Calabash-fruit with an 
exquisite nicety of touch and an elaborate richness of design. 
At other stalls we have English printed calicoes, bareges, 
penknives, crockery-ware, scissors, smoothing-irons, scythes, 
and razors. From the United States, I'm sorry to say, we 
have little or nothing. There are, to be sure, some American 
drillings. But that, for the present, with a few coils or sticks 
of Virginia tobacco, is all we have in the market. Cartago 
herself contributes hats — soft hats made of the fibre of the 
Century-plant — and gold-work, such as chains and armlets, 
love-knots and votive baskets, the latter with the most tempt- 
ing delicacy constructed and redundant with pearls — roseate, 
plump, lustrous pearls — from the Gulf of Nicoya. Then, of 
course, we have oranges, cocoa-nut, sweet corn, bananas, 
zapotes, sweet lemons, and granadillas, the most liquid and 
refreshing of fruits, edible palm-tops, which make the most 
piquant and delicious of salids, blackberries, the blackest and 
juciest that ever purpled one's lips, and potatoes as mealy 
and toothsome as any Irish mouth could desire. 

As for the groups and detached figures — filling up, 
though dispersed, through the picture — there are senoras 
richly dressed, cooling their bare and glossy heads with the 
airiest sun-shades, accompanied by their criadas, who carry 
on their plump shining arms baskets for the purchase their 
mistresses make. At times you come across a German 
housewife, with leg-of-mutton sleeves and Leghorn bonnet. 
The mestizas — the women of the country — in very loose low- 
necked dresses of white or coloured calico, with bare arms 
and feet, sit behind then* serones of fruit and vegetables, 
behind their blocks of cheese and chancaca. the course brown 
sugar of the country, or behind a double row of bottlea 



APPENDIX. 



173 



choked with guarapo, the fermented juice of the sugar-cane, 
and with accents as liquid and refreshing as the guarapo, and 
with a shy gracefulness if the passer-by happens to be a 
stranger, expatiate upon the merits of their merchandise, 
and press their varied commodities for sale. 

Besides their very loose and low-necked dresses of white 
or coloured calico, these winsome merchants sport the 
prettiest pert little hats, some made of straw, others of black, 
brown, or slate-coloured felt. Most of them mount cockades 
of blue or red silk, and all of them fly, as though they were 
Recruiting-Sergeants, the most bewitching bright ribbons. 
They are perfect heart-breakers — those pert little hats — and, 
to settle the business, the young women of Costa Rica are 
decidedly handsome. Their figures are full and round, their 
features regularly cut, their eyebrows richly pencilled, and 
the well -developed head is set upon a neck which displays 
to the best advantage the pretty string of beads which few 
of them dispense with. Their complexion, generally speak- 
ing, suggests a conserve of cream and roses. The pure ex- 
hilarating air of the mountains, in the valleys and up the 
slopes of which two-thirds of the Costa Rican people have 
their homes, tones down the carnation richness of the 
Spanish blood, chastens, and with a pearly hue suffuses it. 
There are, to be sure, some brown, and yellowish, and 
bronzed, and mottled faces to be met with, and some cases 
of goitre, but not enough to contradict what I have said, and 
make it the exception instead of the rule. The old women, 
however, even those approximating the climax of forty — an 
age, which in these more temperate regions of ours serves 
only to mature the colouring and give dignity to the stature 
of womanhood — are the reverse of what they were in their 
youth. They are octogenarians at forty. 

To what this premature overcasting of so much beau- 
teousness and light may be owing, I leave the professors of 
ethnology, as well as the professors of pathology and the 
chemistry of common life, to determine. For my part, I 
own up to a vulgar impression, that if there were consider- 
able less vegetables and esculent roots eaten, and considerable 
more of the poultry, the mutton, and good beef of the 
country consumed, the case would be different. 

But however that be, it is time for us to wish good-bye 
to the Senoras and the Senoritas, which, be they young or 



174 



APPENDIX. 



old, blooming or faded, it becomes us respectfully to do. 
This done, to the barefooted soldiers, with muskets and fixed 
bayonets patrolling the market-place, let us give the salute. 
To the careteros and arrieros, to the teamsters and mule- 
drivers, mingling with their mothers, their wives, their 
pretty daughters and handsome sweethearts, let us bid the 
national adios — adios Seiiores ! Last of all, to the venerable 
Deacon of the Diocese — a very old and feeble man in faded 
red silk soutaine, with a pocket handkerchief of the largest 
size coiled about his head underneath his umbrageous hat, 
for the day is hot, though the clouds are mustering fast on 
Irazu — to the Deacon of the Diocese, as he wheezes along, 
and with his gold-knobbed stick shuffles through the crowd, 
receiving as he passes, from bent and uncovered heads, the 
edifying homage of the young and old, let us, too, with 
reverence for gray hairs and aged limbs, and for the filial 
love with which he is entitled the Father of his People, 
incline the head — and for the scene from which we now 
depart, heartily let us wish many and many a recurrence, 
each succeeding one still happier than the one preceding, in 

the market-place of old Cartago ! 

* p ***** 

THE VOLCANO OF IRAZU. 

It was three o'clock in the afternoon, April the 23d, 1858, 
that, mounted on two strong knowledgeable mules, with the 
necessary amount of blankets and baskets, we set out from 
the Hotel de Irazu to the Yolcan de Irazu. To our first 
stopping-place, the road, though rough and broken by huge 
boulders and fragments of lavastone, and crisp, quick, 
bright streams which crossed it, was a gradual ascent. It 
was an uninteresting country, however, we passed through. 
There were corn-fields, potato-fields, grazing-grounds, and, 
here and there, a stunted tree by the road-side, but that was 
all. Yet it mattered little. For the sky was blue and 
speckless, and the ah' was fresh and bracing, and our mules 
were nimble and spontaneously progressive, and our hearts 
were light. That especially of Don Kamon was so, for he 
had that day heard of the uprising of the people of Yenezuela, 
and the recall from banishment of his beloved and aged 
father ; and his old school-fellow participated in his proud 



APPENDIX, 



175 



joy, and the two, that glorious sweet evening, ascended the 
volcano of Irazu, as though they themselves were laurelled 
heroes making a triumphal march. 

The cattle-farm of Cerado belongs to Nicomedes Saens, 
a wealthy young Costa Kican, who is at this moment, I 
believe, completing his education in an Athenian city of the 
United States. At a height of 1500 feet, it overlooks the 
dismantled white towers and emerald vallev of CartasT). 
The sea is 7,000 feet below. The greater part of it, though 
nominally a cattle-farm, is under cultivation, and yields the 
finest potatoes, peaches, and quinces, in abundance. From 
the keen wind which frequently sweeps down from the cone 
of the volcano, it is sheltered by a broad belt of Alpine oak 
— encino it is called — and the guarumo, which closely resem- 
bles the Mexican arbol das las manitas, the leaf of which, 
representing the human hand, has been for generations an 
object of religious veneration with the natives and peasantry 
of Mexico. This belt is the haunt of tigers, and there are 
snakes without end or measure there, those especially of the 
toboha species, which, though excessively venomous below, 
the mountaineers persist in saying are innocuous in these 
colder regions. 

The house itself, like most of the farm-houses of the 
country, is built of canes and cedar posts, stuccoed outside 
with mud, and thatched with plantain-leaves and corn- husks. 
A numerous family occupies it — three daughters, two 
brothers, a father and mother. One of the daughters is a 
young widow, whose husband was killed in the campaign 
against the Filibusters. Her sisters, Manuela and Kafaela, 
are modest, pretty, white-skinned, black-eyed girls, blushing, 
smiling, bright-minded, and industrious. Manuela wears a 
rosary of gold round her little neck. The sons are lithe, 
picturesquely-featured, unobstrusive, active and hard-work- 
ing as their sisters are. The mother is gracious, pious, 
motherly, and wrinkled, sedulous in her attentions to 
strangers, and proud as a Spartan dame of the son who was 
slain in battle. 

The father is a man whom Salvator Rosa should have 
painted, His name is Benito. Benito is a why, tall, hardy 
fellow, with a long, curved, quick-scenting nose, and round 
full eyes which roll incessantly, and flash at intervals. 
Night and day, blazing or freezing, his neck, and arms, and 



17G 



APPENDIX 



chest are bare. A loose coarse flannel shirt, striped like 
the skin of a tiger, a tattered straw-hat, and blue cotton 
trowsers, one leg of which is tightly rolled up to the knee 
while the other dangles in fringes, is the only covering he 
wears, He is the perfection — the Bayard! — of a moun- 
taineer. He knows every rock, every tree, every bird, 
every root, every beast, every shrub and flower, every 
reptile, every dead and living thing that Irazu has borne, or 
still gives birth to. Intelligent in the highest degree, his 
brain is as quick as his foot, and that has the elasticity of 
the deer and the glancing speed of the arrow. For years 
he has tracked the tiger through the oaks that shelter the 
potrero of Cerado, and elsewhere have root in the rude breast 
of Irazu, and has wet the lava with the blood of the prowler. 
Hence he is known as the Tiger-hunter,. Far and wide that 
is his recognised title. 

Two o'clock in the morning — having had a cup of delicious 
chocolate made for us by Manuela and Rafaela, the Eose 
and Blanche of our wandering story — we left the house 
at Cerado. A few paces plunged us into the heart of the 
forest. It was pitch-dark. There was nothing to light us 
but the lamp of the Tiger-hunter. For an hour and more, 
it seemed as though we were making our way through a 
subterranean passage. There was the precarious glimmering 
of the blurred lamp — there were the foot-falls of the mules 
— there was the rustling of the leaves and the crackling of 
the branches as we brushed or struck against them — there 
was at times, far apart, the cry or whistle of some solitary 
bird. Had sheeted skeletons, grinning and glaring, come 
upon us, we should not have been surprised. Moving up 
so long through this flickering darkness, we had come to 
regard ourselves as spectres or outlaws of the earth, and any 
kindred apparition, instead of striking us with dismay, would 
have been welcomed with a wild and lawless sj^mpathy. 
When we least dreamed of it, however, the forest opened — 
tore asunder as it were — and through the light of the mel- 
lowed moon, we looked down toward the valley out of which 
we had come. Clouds were over it. They were white 
clouds — clouds of the purest fleece and swan-down, one 
would think — and the light of the mellowed moon, pouring 
down upon them, made them look like crystal hills veined 
with gold, rising from an unfathomable lake. 



APPENDIX. 



177 



But it was the vision of a moment only. The forest 
closed upon us as suddenly as it had opened, and there we 
were, for another hour or more, through the same low, dark, 
narrow passage as before, stumbling over stones, striking 
against branches, crouching lest we might be swept off and 
out of our saddles, coming every now and then to a halt, 
and leaving the patient mules to their sure instinct. And, 
finally, the branches growing thicker and spreading them- 
selves lower down — the path narrowing— the bare and 
brawny roots tripping us up at every step — the stirrup- 
leathers catching in the thorny undergrowth, the arbutus- 
briers and yellow-leafed composita interwoven with fern and 
dwarf laurel — forced, at last, to dismount and drag the mules 
after us — in the end, scaling a perpendicular ladder a thou- 
sand feet high, the rungs of which were fallen trees, deep 
ruts, shelving stones and rocks — there we were, another 
hour or more, toiling and aching in the dense darkness — 
Benito, the Tiger-hunter, with his quivering blurred lamp, 
phantom-like, leading the way. 

A second time, suddenly emerging from the forest, in 
which we left the blackness of the night imprisoned, there 
broke the light of morning over us on the bleak dumb ridge 
of Irazu ! 

Below us were the dismantled white towers and emerald 
valley of Cartago — below us were the seven hills and gar- 
dens of Paraiso — below us were the three rivers, the ancient 
Indian village, and the sloping forests of Orosi — below us 
were the mountains of the Agua Caliente and the nobler 
Candellaria — beyond us, and above, was the Supreme 
Andean Chain itself. But neither dismantled white tower, 
nor emerald valley, nor river, nor forest, nor ancient Indian 
village, nor mountain, nor Andean Chain itself was visible. 
From the silent, cold, desolate height on which we stood, 
nothing was to be seen but a wilderness of the whitest 
clouds — nothing was to be seen but an illimitable frozen 
sea, through which, as the sun ascended, the isolated peaks, 
and then the surging ridges of the loftier mountains, one by 
one, as though they were newly- discovered cliffs and islands, 
rose up and glittered. And then — as we breathlessly gazed 
upon it, and our eyes filled up with dazzling tears, and we 
sank upon the ashes subdued by fatigue, and from sharp 
cold and overstraining were incapable of speech, and well- 

M 



178 



APPENDIX, 



nigh were deprived of vision — over this frozen sea there 
floated an enormous purple cloud streaked with crimson. A 
dismasted war-ship, it seemed to us, drifting through fields 
of ice and icebergs into the Antartic solitudes. After all 
our climbing — after all our groping in the dark — after all 
our stumbling over stones and roots — after all our scrambling 
through thick-set oaks, fern, dwarf -laurel and arbutus-briers 
— after all our ups and downs, fears and superstitions, per- 
vading shadows and sudden lights, swimming eyes and reel- 
ing brains — behold our goal and recompense in the crater of 
Irazu ! 

Exhausted with its convulsions, it yawns there calmly, 
though coldly and dismally, in the pure sweet light of the 
morning, the Gladiator in Eepose ! 

Standing with folded arms on the brink of that abyss, 
what is the thought that overwhelms and subjugates the 
mind ? It is that of terrific strength entranced in solitude. 
Standing there, you feel as though you had been spirited 
from the living world, and were in the presence of a crea- 
tion which, thousands of years ago, had been lost, and which 
it had been reserved for you to find, or which, glowing for 
the first time with the breath of the Creator, was not yet 
perfect, and had still to be divulged. 

It grows brighter and warmer, however, and the sensa- 
tions and fancies the vision first excited, having, like a wild 
throbbing sea, gone down, you become reconciled to and 
familiar with the place — at home, in fact, though frightfully 
out of the way — and wrapping your blue or red California 
blanket about you, for there's nothing in this miserable world 
comparable to it when one's up in the clouds — you commence 
to take outlines and notes. Don Ramon and Don Francisco, 
steadying themselves a little, attempted to do so. But, first 
of all, they found they had to take something. 

What is Something ? 

It depends on tastes and is controlled by circumstances. 
Under these conditions, it may be Cogniac or Monongahela, 
brown Sherry, Apple- Jack, Jersey-Lightning, Bourbon, or 
Catawba. With us it was old Scotch whisky. And that 
old Scotch whisky, at that moment, was to us what the 
amrita — the Drink of Immortality administered by the 
Mystic Sisters — was to the warriors of the Sanscrit Mytho- 
logy. Invigorated and enlivened by it, what was it we 



APPENDIX. 



179 



pencilled off and noted down ? Why this — that we were in 
the crater of Irazu, which had so horribly disgorged itself 
in 1723, and had ever since kept grumbling to the dis- 
quietude and dismay of thousands — that the crater was an 
amphitheatre with broken walls, 7,500 feet in circumference, 
throwing up a cone of ashes and rapilli, 1000 feet in height 
— that the floor on which we stood had exploded, or caved 
in, to the depth of 50 fathoms — that in the lower floor, loose 
and shelving as it was, there were four openings, out of one 
of which came puffs of sulphurous smoke — that we had been 
warned not to descend, for though the descent was easy, the 
ascent, owing to the shifting lava-sand, was exhausting in 
the extreme, if it was not fatally impracticable — that in the 
last eruption, that of 1841, the flood of lava had rushed over 
a precipice of 2,000 feet, had spent itself in the densely- 
wooded wilderness to the North, and thus spared the city 
and the valley of Cartago, sprinkling, instead of deluging, 
the latter in its ravenous ebullition — this is what we pencilled 
off and noted down. Had the weather been clearer, in one 
glance we might have seen the two great oceans, the 
Atlantic and Pacific. This is the crowning recompense of 
the ascent of Irazu. But John L. Stephens was more for- 
tunate, and he has left us, in his clear and vivid words, the 
impression of what he saw and felt, when, as we did, he 
stood on the ridge, and looked out, wide over the remote 
world from the crater of Irazu. 

THE LAST DAYS. 

Crossing the valley of Ujarras, we visited the coffee- 
plantation of Dr George Guirey, of Philadelphia, where we 
met with a cordial hospitality, encountered another colony of 
monkeys, who furiously evinced on our heads their aversion 
to foreigners, visited the Falls of the Berbis — grander still 
than those of the Macho, the torrent, leaping from the abrupt 
ledge above, being but a misty speck in the chasm, five 
hundred feet below — and where we ate, .drank, talked pre- 
posterous politics, shouted the Marseillaise, spread ourselves 
on Manifest Destiny and ox-hides, smoked, drank again, and 
finally fell off to sleep to the roar of the Reventazon. 

Starting from the Doctor's at sunrise, we travelled for 



180 



APPENDIX. 



miles with Pedro over a narrow quagmire running along the 
face of the mountains of Cervantes. Gigantic laurels, ar- 
borescent ferns, oaks and cedars, wild fig-trees of enormous 
girth, overspread the soaking path, entangled or towered 
above it, while, here and there, streams gurgled across it, 
tumbling into the precipice we overlooked, the profound si- 
lence, at times, being broken only by the shrill clarion-notes 
of the wild turkey, the nervous springing of the deer through 
the thickets, the booming of the wild peacock, the creaking 
of the trapiche, crushing the sugar-cane in some lonesome 
clearing in the forest, the cavernous voices of the howling 
monkeys, or the rumbling of distant thunder. As the day 
brightened, we entered the sugar plantation of Naranjo, one 
of the finest in the country, and breakfasted there on 
oranges, plucking the fruit from the tree, without dismount- 
ing from our mules. This over, away we went, down a 
break-neck hill, the vegetation growing ranker and the air 
more sultry, until, at last, looking up from the valley into 
which we had descended, we beheld the volcano of Turrialba 
— the volcano of the White Tower — with its vast pillar of 
smoke and fire, belted with an impervious forest of palm — 
remote, mysterious, awe-inspiring, inaccessible it is said — 
looming against the sky ! 

That volcano is a terror to the people — the burning 
agony of it is incessant — no human foot has scaled it— none 
have dared the exploit — and the poor Indian, with his 
clouded brain growing darker and stormier with the belief, 
tells you that the Great Fiend dwells there, and that they are 
lost who venture to ascend. The dense primeval forest, the 
ravines and chasms, the vast field of lava, the perpendicular 
bare smooth rock, springing up several feet from them to 
the lips of the surging crater, — all which are clearly visible 
from below, — these are what to this day have rendered it 
fearful and inscrutable. 

Three weeks after our ride to the valley of Turrialba, I 
had crossed the Cordilleras, and, having descended the road 
to La Muelle, and thence floated down the Serapiqui and 
San Juan in a bungo to Greytown, I was on board the 
Jamestown, IT. S. sloop-of-war, the guest of her genial and 
accomplished Captain. Don Ramon had returned to Panama 
by the route we had come. 

Looking back towards the mountains, among which we 



APPENDIX. 



181 



had spent these pleasant Holidays, I saw the volcano of the 
White Tower, high in the heavens, burning in the gray 
light of the dawn, in another world it seemed to me, so re- 
mote and isolated was it. That it was unknown as though 
it belonged in reality to another world, millions of miles 
away, and that they, who lived nearest to it, were those 
who most feared to tempt the solitude which invests it, and 
that it stands there, to this hour, in its unviolated grandeur, 
exciting, while it repels, the curiosity and hardihood of those 
who would add it as another trophy to the conquests of Sci- 
ence and the audacity of the age, I could not help feeling 
sad and abashed to think. But, when my thoughts reverted 
to the country of which the Flag above me was the glow- 
ing type, and when the exploits of her explorers at the same 
time recurred to me, and her pioneers and fleets crowded 
upon my vision, the conviction arose within me, that the 
day will come when the gold of the Estrella shall return to 
light, and the secrets of the valley of the Frio shall be made 
known, and Turrialba shall be scaled. In that pillar of 
smoke by day — in that pillar of flame by night — I read the 
sublime promise of confirmed liberty to the land, wealth, 
and power, instead of comparative insignificance and humble 
fortunes, the wilderness a garden, and for mankind, going 
up there from the ends of the earth to the high places 
thereof, a purer happiness, a statelier altitude, and a brighter 
aspect. 

Inwardly to behold this vision, and boldly to disclose it, 
no gift of prophecy, no hazardous philosophy, deducing its 
predictions from the laws of science or the analysis of 
human progress, not even that spirit of poetry, which some- 
times gives to the illiterate the wisdom of the philosopher 
and to the profane the infallibility of the prophet, is want- 
ing. From the great Book of Nature, which is open to all, 
which all can read, and from which the humblest mind sel- 
dom fails to derive lessons of high hopefulness and expan- 
sive forethought, for the land of the vanished Aztec I predict 
an unexampled renovation. 

A permanent barrier to the encroachments of the two 
great seas, and gradually rising from their level in a series 
of ample terraces, each exhibiting its peculiar forms of ani- 
mal and vegetable life, each its peculiar soil and climate, 
each its adaptability for some special physical condition, 



182 



APPENDIX. 



thus, step by step, developing the whole phenomena of crea- 
tion, until, as in Costa Rica, at a height varying from three 
to four and six thousand feet, it rolls off into extensive 
plateaus or table-lands, divided by parallel and intersecting 
chains of mountains, crowned with fortresses like that of 
Turrialba, and pouring down, on their errands of health and 
f ruitf ulness, waters that never fail, Central America presents, 
in the language of Senor Astaburuaga, to the lover of 
nature, to the man of science, to the agriculturist, to those 
who prefer the pastoral cares, to those who covet the pre- 
cious metals, to the merchant, the most ambitious and insa- 
tiable, as, indeed, to the industrious and adventurous of 
every denomination, a field of incomparable novelty and ex- 
haustless wealth. In a word, the forests, the rivers, the 
mines, the valleys with which it abounds — all teeming and 
overflowing with the treasures of nature — constitute it in 
itself a New World, which, in the partial obscurity that en- 
compasses it, seems to have been reserved, by a Providence 
of infinite views, for future generations, and for an exhibi- 
tion of happiness and glory which shall transcend the for- 
tunes and achievements of this day, justly prized and 
applauded as they are. 



MEAGHER'S LAST HOURS. 



[The following is an authentic account of the closing hours 
of General Meagher's life, and the manner of his death, 
kindly furnished by Mr John T. Doran, of St. Louis, who at 
the time of the unfortunate occurrence was pilot of the 
steamer G. A. Thompson, lying at Fort Benton, which the 
author acknowledges with thanks :] 

66 St. Louis, Dec. 16, 1859. 

" Captain W. F. Lyons : 

" Dear Sib, — A very severe illness has compelled me to 
defer an answer to your letter, but realizing the importance 
of your request, I reply at my earliest convenience, though 
my health compels me to call the pen of a friend to my assist- 
ance. I will endeavour to communicate without elaboration 
the circumstances of General Meagher's death, believing that 
I am conversant with all the facts, as I was with him con- 
stantly on the day of the sad occurrence, and was the last 
man that spoke to him on earth. 

"In the spring of 1866 I was pilot on the steamer 
Ontario, bound for Fort Benton. Among the passengers 
was Mrs Gen. Meagher, on her way to join her husband in 
the mountain country. My position on the boat placed in 
my power many opportunities of extending trifling courtesies 
to her ; and knowing the high esteem in which her husband 
was held by the country, and being acquainted with his 
previous history, I endeavoured, as far as lay in my power, 
to obviate the weariness of the long and tedious voyage. 
General Meagher attached undue importance to this, and 
ever after, though it would be presumption for me to say 
that w r e were friends, yet I had much reason to believe that 
he ever entertained the kindliest feeling towards me. So 
much by way of preface, which is not altogether unnecessary, 
as it partially explains the subsequent events. 

" The following year I became pilot of the steamer G, 



184: 



APPENDIX. 



A. Thompson, which left St. Louis in the early pan of April, 
and arrived at Foil Benton June 29th, 1867. On our arrival 
in port we found there the steamers Guidon and Amelia Poe. 
about one hundred yards apart from each other, and we 
anchored between the two, about equal distance from each. 
Shortly after landing I went up to the upper boat (Amelia 
Poe), and while fishing from her lower deck I saw a troop 
of about twelve horsemen riding into town. I afterwards 
discovered that they were General Meagher and staff. 
Wearying soon of the piscatorial sport. I went to the pro- 
vision store of J. G. Baker, and in a back room of the estab- 
lishment I discovered General Meagher reading a paper. 
Looking up and immediately recognising me, he greeted me 
most warmly, and both seating ourselves, we engaged in a 
long conversation. 

u He informed me that on his road into Benton he was 
very sick, at Sun Paver, for six days — that the object of his 
present visit was to procure arms and equipments for a 
regiment he had already raised to fight against the Indians ; 
and learning that the required articles were not there but at 
Camp Cook, 120 miles below, he expressed his determination 
to proceed to the aforesaid place the next day. He also spoke 
in the most tender and affectionate terms of his wife, resid- 
ing at Helena, saying that in then* mountain home they were 
1 as happy as two thrushes in a bush.' Finally, dinner-time 
coming on, and learning that he was stopping at no particu- 
lar place, I invited him down to the boat to dine. — an 
invitation which he accepted. After dinner we walked 
through the town, and meeting numerous friends, we were 
invited on several occasions to partake of the hospitalities 
always urgently extended to strangers in this section of the 
country ; and on each instance the General politely but 
firmly refused to accede to their request, saying that his 
experience at Sun Paver had given him a distaste for such 
amusement. Thus, in walking and talking, we spent the 
afternoon, and towards evening wended our way to the boat 
(Thompson) to take tea. The sun had just begun to go 
down as we took our chairs out on the guards of the boat, 
and as the weather was very pleasant, we lit our cigars and 
commenced reading. I lent the General a book I had 
brought from the States ; it was the 4 Collegians,' by Gerald 
Griffin. He seemed to peruse it with great attention for 



APPENDIX. 



185 



about half an hour, when, suddenly closing- it, he turned to 
me and said very excitedly, 4 Johnny, they threaten my life 
in that town ! As I passed I heard some men say, 4 4 There 
he goes." ? I endeavoured to persuade him that his fears 
were utterly groundless, as indeed they were, for there was 
not one man in the Territory who did not love him. He 
then asked me if I was armed, and on my assuring him that 
I was, he desired to see my pistols. I immediately produced 
two navy revolvers (every one is armed in that country) ; 
and he seeing that they were loaded and capped, handed 
them back to me.* Perceiving that he was wearied and 
nervous, I persuaded him to retire to his berth. By this 
time it was pitch-dark, the hour being about half-past nine. 
He begged me not to leave him ; but on my assuring him that 
it would be only for a few moments, and I would return and 
occupy the upper berth, he retired. I fixed the clothes 
about him, locked the door of the state-room, and went 
down on the lower deck. Xow the lock on the door leading 
into the cabin was very defective, but I did not mind it 
much as I intended to return without delay. I had been on 
the lower deck but a short time when I heard a splash in 
the dark waters below, immediately followed by the cry of 
4 man overboard.' I rushed towards the water, and the 
engineer saluted me with, 4 Johnny, it's your friend/ To 
have jumped in would not only have been useless but almost 
certain death, as the river there was about twelve feet deep, 
and with a current rushing at the rate of nine miles an hour ; 
and furthermore, it was so dark that no object could be 
discerned. Accompanied by several others I ran down on 
the shore towards the Guidon, which lay fifty yards below ; 
in the meantime hearing two agonizing cries from the man, 
the first one very short, the last prolonged, and of the most 
heart-rending description. We rushed into the wheel of the 
steamer and lowered ourselves hip-deep in the water, clinging 
with our hands to the wheel, while others threw out ropes 
and boards, but all of no avail. The next day, cannons 
were fired, the river dragged, and the shores and islands 
searched, but all to no purpose. 

44 The river below is dotted with innumerable small 

* During his conflict with the politicians Meagher had been 
frequently threatened. 



186 



APPENDIX. 



islands, of different and various areas, the activity of hostile 
Indians preventing" us from exploring the ones farthest 
down ; and no doubt the body of the gallant and unfortunate 
General was washed ashore on one of them, for though I 
wrote descriptive letters to all the forts below, I never 
heard any tidings of it. 

" These, Captain, are the particulars of Gen. Meagher's 
death, of which I know more probably than any one else. 
Hoping that they may be of some little service to you, 

44 1 am, yours respectfully, 

44 John T. Doran. 

"408 N. Fourth Street, St. Louis." 



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Hearts of Steel. Crown 8vo. Green Enamelled Boards, price Is., free 
by post for 14 stamps. 



GLASGOW : CA3CER0N & FERGUSON. 88 to 94 West Nile St 



LONDON; 12 AVE MABIA LANE. 



CAMERON & FERGUSON'S 



stxnnm u^hahy 

oar 

ROMANCE AND ADVENTURE. 



%* Containing first-class Reprints and Original Works of an interesting 
character. The titles will show that there is variety to suit most readers, and 
all cannot fail to derive pleasure from their perusal. Each Volume is com- 
plete in itself, contains 128 or 160 pages Crown 8vo, printed on good paper, 
done up in handsome Illustrated Coloured Cover. This series supplies a 
want long felt, of books which do not weary by their length, but sustain the 
interest throughout by their stirring narratives and powerfully pourtrayed 
characters. Price 6d. each; or, Free by Post for 7 Stamps. 



1. THE SCOTTISH CHIEFS, by Miss Jane Pouter. 

2. THE OUTLAWS' REVENGE; or. The Lost Heir of Roskelyn. 

3. THADDEUS THE BRAVE; or, Warsaw's Last Champion. A Ro- 

mance of the Polish War. 

4. THE WARRIOR BROTHERS; a Romance of Love and Crime. 

5. THE INSURGENT CHIEF; or, The Pikemen of '98. A Romance oi 

the Irish Rebellion. 

6. THE CHAMBER MYSTERY; or, The Nun's Daughter. 

7. THE PIRATE OF THE SLAVE COAST; or, the White Lady of the 

Island. 

8. THE SHAWNEE FIEND ; or, Nick of the Woods. 

9. RIPPERDA THE RENEGADE ; or, The Sies:e of Ceuta. 

10. THE ARKANSAS RANGER; or, Dingle the Backwoodsman. 

11. NEVERFAIL; or, The Children of the Border. 

12. THE WHITE QUEEN AND THE MOHAWK CHIEF. 

13. PAUL THE ROVER; or, The Scourtre of the Antilles. 

H. THE WITCH OF THE WAVE; or,^The Rover's Captive. 

15. THE HEIR AND THE USURPER; or, The Ducal Coronet. 

16. THE MYSTIC TIE ; a Tale of the Camp and Court of Buonaparte. 

17. THE TURKISH SLAVE; or, The Dumb Dwarf of Constantinople. 

18. DISINHERITED ; or, The Heir of Motcombe. 

19. THE SILVER HAND ; a Story of Land and Sea. 

20. THE KING'S TALISMAN ; an Eastern Romance. 



V A NEW VOLUME ISSUED EVERY MONTH. 



The Publishers will forward, free, to any address in the United Kingdom, 
the above-mentioned, or others of their Publications, on receipt of Stamps to the 
amount required* 



Glasgow: CAMERON & FERGUSON, 88 & 94 West Nile Street 



iN E W MUSICAL WORKS 



FOE THE FLUTE. 

,THE ART OF PLAYING THE FLUTE WITHOUT A MASTER: an Improved 
and Complete Tutor for the Instrument j with Instructions, Scales, and 66 Popular Airs. Pries 
6rf, post free for 7 stamps. 

100 SCOTTISH AIRS FOR THE FLUTE; with Instructions and Scales for the 

Instrument. Price Gd, pest free for 7 stamps. 
$00 ENGLISH AND NATIONAL AIRS FOR THE FLUTE; with Instructions 

and Scales for the Instrument. Price Gd, post free for 7 stamps. 
■00 IRISH AIRS FOR THE FLUTE; with Instructions and Scales for the 

Instrument. Price Gd, post free for 7 stamps. 
ilCO CHRISTY'S MINSTRELS' AIRS FOR THE FLUTE ; with Instructions 

and Scales for the Instrument. Price Gd, post free for 7 stamps. 
.215 AIRS OF ALL NATIONS FOR THE FLUTE; containing upwards of 200 

Popular Airs ; with Ins;ructions, Scales, &c. Price Is, post free for 13 stamps. 



FOR THE VIOLIN. 

THE ART OF PLAYING THE VIOLIN WITHOUT A MASTER: an Improved 

and Complete Tutor for the Instrument; with Instructions, Scales, and 65 Popular Airs. 

Price 6rf, post free for 7 stamps. 
100 SCOTTISH AIRS FOR THE VIOLIN ; with Instructions and Scales for the 

Instrument. Price 6c?, post free for 7 stamps. 
100 ENGLISH AND NATIONAL AIRS FOR THE VIOLIN; with Instructions 

and Scales for the Instrument. Price 6tf, post free for 7 stamps. 
100 IRISH AIR^ FOR THE VIOLIN ; with Instructions and Scales for the 

Instrument. Price 6d, post free for 7 stamps. 
100 CHRISTY'S MINSTRELS' AIRS FOR THE VIOLIN; with Instructions 

and Scales for the Instrument. Price Gd, post free for 7 stamps. 
22S AIRS OF ALL NATIONS FOR THE VIOLIN; eontflim'nsr npwards of 200 

Popular Airs, with Instructions, Scales, &c. Price 1$, post free for 13 stamps. 



FOR THE PIANO-PORTE. 

EZCELSIOR SERIES. 

Full Music Size, 24 pages, in beautifully Illustrated Covers. 

*** The following Works for the Piano-Forte have been arranged by Mr C. H. Mcbine, whose well- 
known Compositions are a suarantee lor their excellence. Each Book is complete in itself, and 
contains generally from Fifty to Sixty Popular Melodies. Kos. 1 to 8 now ready—the othtr5 
are issued monthly. Price Is each, post free for 14 stamps. 

Contents of the Series. 

1. SIXTY SCOTTISH MELODIES. 

2. FIFTY CHRISTY'S MINSTRELS' MELODIES. 

3. FIFTY-EIGHT ENGLISH AND NATIONAL MELODIES. 

4. FIFTY-EIGHT IRISH MELODIES. 

5. FIFTY-FOUR AIRS OF ALL NATIONS. 

6. FORTY-SIX FAVOURITE OPERATIC AIRS, 

7. FIFTY-TWO AMERICAN AND NEGRO MELODIES. 

8. FIFTY-FOUR SCOTTISH MELODIES. (2nd Series.) 

9. SELECTION OF MOORE'S AND OTHER IRISH MELODIES (2nd Serie^ 
10. SELECTION OF SCOTTISH DANCE TUNES. 

1L SELECTION OF QUADRILLES AND COUNTRY DANCES. 
12. SELECTION OF WALTZES, POLKAS, SCEOTTISCHES, &a 



MORINE'S PIANO-FORTE TUTOR. Full Music Size, in Handsome Illustrated 
Cover. Containing a complete Course of Instructions, with a Selection of Tunes in graduated 
succession, from the simple melody performed with one hand, to compositions requiring facility 
with both. 

%* Tlie Publishers wile forward, free, to any address in the United Kingdom, the above-mentioned or 
otlxrs of their Publications, on receipt of stamps to the amount required. 



Glasgow: CAMERON & FERGUSON, 88 & Q4 West Nile Street. 



CAMERON & FERGUSON'S 

300KB FOE THE CONCERTINA 



SONGS SERIES. 
Containing tile WORDS and MUSIC of all the Songs, and admirably 
adapted for Vocal Accompaniment to this Popular Instrument 

THE TREASURY OF SONGS for the Concertina ; containing One Hundred and 
Twenty of the most Popular Songs of the day, arranged for Singing and Playing. Price 1*, fm 
by post for 14 stamps. 

SIXTY CHRISTY'S MINSTRELS' SONGS for the Concertina, with the TVordi 

and Music. Price 6d, free by post for 7 stamps. 

SIXTY ENGLISH AND NATIONAL SONGS for the Concertina, with the Words 

and Music Price 6c?, free by post for 7 stamps. 

SIXTY SCOTTISH SONGS for the Concertina, with the Words and Music. 
Price Gd, free by post for 7 stamps. 

SIXTY IRISH SONGS for the Concertina, with the Words and Music. Price 6d, 
frte by post for 7 stamps. 

SIXTY AMERICAN AND NEGRO SONGS for the Concertina, with the Wordi 

and Music. Price Gd, free by post for 7 stamps. 

SEVENTY SACRED SONGS — PSALMS AND HYMNS— for the Concertina, with 
the Words and Music Price 6d, free by post for 7 stamps. 



INSTRUMENTAL SERIES. 

Each of the following Books, besides containing a Selection of Tunes Marked and Figured for Playing, 
gives Scales for the 10 and 20 Keyed Instruments ; by attention to tchich facility in performing ii 
readily acquired. These Works are the most popular that have ever been issued for this Instrument! 

THE COMPLETE TUTOR FOR THE CONCERTINA ; containing the Rudiments 

of Music, Simple Instructions for Playing, and a great variety of Popular Melodies marked and 
figured. Cover beautifully Illustrated in Colours. Price Is, post free for 14 stamps. 

THE ART OF PLAYING THE CONCERTINA WITHOUT A MASTER: an 
Improved Instruction Book for the Instrument; with Lessons on Music, Scales, and a Selection 
of Favourite Airs marked and figured. Price Gd, post free for 7 stamps. 

100 CHRISTY'S MINSTRELS' AIRS, marked and figured for the 10 and 20 
keyed Concertina. With Complete Instructions and Scales. Price 6d, post free for 7 stamps. 

100 ENGLISH AND NATIONAL AIRS, marked and figured for the 30 and 20 
keyed Concertina. With Cmplete Instructions and Scales. Price Gd, post free for 7 stamps. 

100 SCOTTISH AIRS, marked and figured chiefly for the 10 and 20 keyed Con- 
certina. With Complete Instructions and Scales. Price Gd, post free for 7 stamps. 

100 IRISH AIRS, marked and figured mostly for the 10 and 20 keyed Concertina. 
With Complete Instructions and Scales. Price 6d, post free for 7 stamps. 

100 FAVOURITE AIRS, DANCES, SONGS, &c, marked chiefly for the 10 and 
20 keyed Concertina. With Complete Instructions and Scales. Price 6d, post free for 7 stamps. 

100 MOORE'S IRISH MELODIES, marked mostly for the 10 and 20 keyed Concer. 
tina ; containing the most popular of those exquisite National Airs. Price 6d, post free for 7 stamps. 

ADAMS'S DANCING TUNES, containing Quadrilles, Waltzes, Polka?, Schottisches, 
Country Dances, Jigs, Reels, &c.,&c, marked and figured for playing. PriceQd,post free fori stamps. 

SCOTTISH DANCE MUSIC; containing Reels, Strathspeys, Jigs, Country 
Dances, &c, &c, marked and figured for playing. Price 6d, post free for 7 stamps. • 

100 AMERICAN AND NEGRO MELODIES; being a Second Series of the Popu- 
lar Airs performed by Christy's Minstrels, Buckley's Serenaders, and other Ethiopian Companies, 
marked and figured for playing. Price 6d, post free for 7 stamps. 

120 SACRED AIRS, marked and figured chiefly for the 10 and 20 keyed Concertina* 
With Complete Instructions anG Scales. Price 6d, post free for 7 stamps. 

ADAMS'S SELECTION OF.. AIRS FOR THE 20 KEYED CONCERTINA, 
marked and figured. Price 6d, post free for 7 stamps. 

AIRS OF ALL NATIONS: a raried and Popular Collection of Tunes, 

marked and figured for playing. Price Is, post free for 14 stamps. 



Glasgow 5 OAMERQN & FERGUSON* *3 & 94 West Nile Street 



CAMERON & FERGUSON'S 

MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS. 

AMUSING, INSTRUCTIVE, AND USEFUL. 



EVENING PASTIMES ; or, Amusements for Hearths and Homes; 

containing a fund of merriment and entertaining instruction, "with Games and 
Plays, suitable for all ages and all seasons. Price 6d, Post free for 7 Stamps. 

*A ROUND OP AMUSEMENTS FOR WINTER EVENINGS, con- 

taining Games, Conundrums, Puzzles, Kiddles, Charades, Kebuses, and varie- 
ties of entertainment for happy homes. Price 6d, Post free for 7 Stamps. 

THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS; or, Garden Telegraph for Ladies 

and Gentlemen: a Dictionary of Floral Emblems. Part I., Flowers, with the 
Sentiments which they represent ; Part II., Sentiments, with the Flowers which 
represent them. Elegantly bound, in fancy cloth gilt. Price 6d, Post free 
for 7 Stamps ; or sewed, ornamental cover, Price 3d, Post free for 4 Stamps. 

JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE; 

Miniature or Pocket Edition, very complete, with the words accented to show 
the pronunciation. Price 6d, neatly bound in cloth, Post free for 7 Stamps. 

JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE; 

a Larger Edition ; containing besides, Explanations of French and Latin 
Phrases, and List of Common Abbreviations. Price 9d, Post free for 10 Stamps. 

THE COMPLETE READY RECKONER, Extended, Revised, and 

Improved, in a Series of Tables, showing the accurate cost of any number of 
articles, at prices from One Farthing to One Pound, with List of Stamp Duties, 
Tables of Interest, Wages and Expenditure, Weights and Measures, &c, &e. 
Price 6d, Post free for 7 Stamps. 

THE LIFE OF SIR WILLIAM WALLACE, the Hero of Scotland. 

Sixth Edition, with numerous Engravings, illustrating some of the most re- 
markable Exploits in his eventful History. Price 6d, Post free for 7 Stamps. 

THE LORD OF THE ISLES, by Sir Walter Scott; with the 

Author's Notes, and Introduction to the original edition. Price 6d, Post free 
for 7 Stamps. 

PERILS AND ADVENTURES ON THE DEEP; or, Narratives of 

Shipwrecks, Sea Fights, Adventures of Pirates, and Deeds of Daring : an in- 
teresting book for boys. Price 6d, Post free for 7 Stamps. 

JANE SEATON; or, the Cornelian Cross, and other Tales for the 

Young. Illustrated. Price 6d, Post free for 7 Stamps. 

STORIES OF ROME AND ITS HEROES, by Lady Sandford; con- 

taining Tales of Heroism and Adventure in the brave days of Old. illustrated 
with numerous Wood Engravings. Prfte 6d, Post free for 7 Stamps. 

THE BOOK OF WONDERS, Natural and Artificial; containing 

Descriptions and Illustrations. Price Qd, Post free for 7 Stamps. 

, BIBLE LANDS DESCRIBED AND ILLUSTRATED; with numerous 

Engravings of Places famous in Sacred Story. Price 6d, Post free for 7 
Stamps, 



The Publishers witl forward, free, to any address in the United Kingdom, the above mentioned 
or others of their Publications, on receipt of Stamps to the amount required. 



Glasgow: CAMERON & FERG-USCN 83 6 04 West Kile .. ire A. 



CAMERON & FERGUSON'S 

Letter Writers. 

NEW SERIES. 

This scries will be found a great improvement on almost all works of the 
same class published hitherto. The style, expressions, forms of address, and 
subjects of the Letters being modernized and adapted from the best models of corres- 
pondence extant, render them valuable handbooks to all who experience any difficulty 
in the art of Letter Writing. 



THE COMPREHENSIVE LETTER WRITER: a Universal 

Guide to Epistolary Correspondence for Ladies and Gentlemen ; con- 
taining complete Instructions in the art of Letter Writing; 240 
Examples of Letters — Juvenile, Friendly, Mercantile, Courting, and 
Matrimonial; Useful Commercial Forms; Instructions how to make a 
Will, with Examples; Forms of Petitions, Memorials, and Applica- 
tions; Directions for addressing Persons of all Ranks; with other 
Useful Information indispensable to a Polite Correspondent. Price 
Is., post free for 14 stamps. 

THE MODERN LETTER WRITER; for the use of Ladies 

and Gentlemen; comprising upwards of 140 original Letters on 
Business, Love, Courtship, Marriage, and other subjects; Directions 
for Letter W riting ; Forms of Invitations, Receipts, Bills, and Notes ; 
Correspondent's Directory, and copious List of Useful Abbreviations, 
Price Gd., post free for 7 stamps. 

THE MERCANTILE LETTER WRITER; or Practical Cor- 
respondence for the Warehouse, Shop, and Counting-house; contain- 
ing 111 Examples of Business Letters on familiar subjects, Orders for 
Goods, Applications for Situations, Forms of Receipts, Bills of 
Exchange, Petitions and Memorials, Directions for Addressing 
Persons of all Ranks and Classes, with Hints on Mercantile Letter 
Writing; Instructions for making Wills, with Examples, and List of 
Commercial Signs and Abbreviations. Price 6d., post free for 7 stamps. 

THE LADIES' LETTER WRITER; containing 66 Examples 
of Letters on Love, Courtship, Business, Friendship, and a variety of 
other subjects; with Forms of Invitations, Cards, Notes, Bills, &c; 
Directions for addressing Persons of all Ranks, and List of Abbrevia- 
tions. Price 3d., post free for 4 stamps. 

THE GENTLEMEN'S LETTER WRITER; containing 68 

Specimens of Letters on Business, Friendship, Love, Courtship, and 
various other subjects ; with Applications for Situations, Forms of 
Receipts and Bills, Correspondent's Directory, and List of Useful 
Abbreviations. Price 3d., post free for 4 stamps. 

CUPID'S LETTER WRITER; or, Lover's Guide to Cor* 

respondence ; containing Model Letters on Love, Courtship, and 
Marriage ; Love's Telegraph, Marriage Ceremonies, &c, &c. ; — suitable 
for Ladies and Gentlemen. Price 3d., post free for 4 stamps. 

THE JUVENILE LETTER WRITER; or, Guide to Epistolary 
Correspondence for Young Ladies and Gentlemen in the School and 
Family Circle; containing directions how to write a Letter; Specimens 
of Letters on various subjects; Complimentary Cards, &c, &c Price" 
2d., post free for 3 stamps. 

Glasgow: CAMERON^ FERGUSON, 88 & 94 West Nile St. 



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